Nitric acid is considered as one of top world’s producing chemicals, having uses in variety of sources and products.
Utilization includes in manufacture of fertilizers, polyurethanes, nylon, polyamides filaments, as propellant for rockets in
aerospace industries, explosives like trinitrotoluene, nitro-glycerine and some more. Its production and concentration involve
importance only when carried out using the optimization techniques. Such a method is utilized here. Conventional rectification
method alone mostly used to separate and purify chemical mixtures but has disadvantage of being an energy-intensive unit
operation. In order to control the processing and yield of plant, the material, energy balances become fundamental. This paper
discusses production of 130 metric tons concentrated nitric acid using recycling and rectification, serving an alternatively
suitable approach with overall plant flow sheet under the assumption of steady state.
