The extractive distillation process exploits the capacity of some chemicals to alter the relative volatility between the components of a mixture. In this way, a third component (called entrainer) may be added to an azeotropic binary mixture to break the azeotrope. This paper discusses the potential use of ethylene glycol as entrainer in a 1-propanol dehydration process by extractive distillation. First, the present work focuses on the acquisition of isobaric vapor-liquid equilibrium data of the ternary system 1-propanol + water + ethylene glycol system and the binaries systems 1-propanol + ethylene glycol and water + ethylene glycol. All measurements were done at 101.3 kPa. The experimental data were correlated by the Wilson, NRTL and UNIQUAC local composition models in order to obtain a set of thermodynamic parameters.. Finally, the extractive distillation process was simulated and later economically optimized with the aid of commercial software (Aspen Hysys (R)) using the previously obtained parameters of the NRTL model. (c) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.