Mathematical Modeling and Simulation for Production of MTBE

Chapter One Introduction
1. Pressure swing distillation.
2. Salted distillation.
3. Extractive distillation.
4. Azeotropic distillation.
5. Reactive distillation.
As shown above the presence of the azeotrope in a mixture makes
separation by conventional distillation difficult. Azeotropes can form distillation
regions, which limit the separation. When reacive distillation process is used,
improvements can be obtained by really integrating the tasks, on the following
items:
• On the reaction: because there is an equilibrium displacement, since the
products are being withdrawn.
• On the separation: because of the changes in the driving force for mass
transfer due to the reaction.
There are several applications of reactive distillation to separate azeotropic
mixtures in industry, for example production of octane boosters (MTBE,
TAME, and ETBE)
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