An economic study of two alternatives for styrene monomer purification based on equilibrium staged processes is presented For this purpose, the solubility of t-butylcatechol (TBC) in styrene and the styrene-water liquid-liquid equilibrium were experimentally determined. In terms of economics, a combined process extraction-distillation shows worse results than a conventional distillation process, for the styrene purification, but this process could be suitable in a high energy cost scenario Measured activity coefficients NRTL model and UNIFAC predictive model were used for the process optimization (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved