Water separation process

Water present in a hot gaseous product stream from a reactor system A.B (FIG. 1) containing hydrogen fluoride is separated from the stream in order to eliminate a potentially corrosive combination of water and HF. The water is removed by contacting the gaseous product stream with liquid HF in a distillation column so as to obtain a bottoms product containing liquid HF and water and a top product containing dry HF and the product to be recovered. The invention encompasses the separation process, a vessel for carrying out the process (FIGS. 2 to 4), a control system for the liquid HF supply to the distillation column (FIGS. 5 and 6) and a recovery system for recovering HF employed during operation of the reactor system in different regimes employing HF as a fluorination agent, as a diluent during catalyst regeneration and/or catalyst prefluorination (FIG. 7).