A new entrainer for separation of tetrahydrofuran-water azeotropic mixture by extractive distillation was introduced in this article. 1,2-Propanediol was used as the entrainer instead of 1,4-butanediol, which decreased the reboiler energy and entrainer consumption. Tetrahydrofuran-water extractive binary column distillation system was simulated with the HYSYS software platform. 1,2-Propanediol and 1,4-butanediol are used as solvent in the simulation respectively. Simulation results showed that there are a lot of advantages when 1,2-propanediol was entrainer. The results were then corroborated in a batch experimental column for the selected entrainer. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.