Boreskov Institute of Catalysis of the Siberian Branch of Russian ...

OP-III-12ETHYL ACETATE SYNTHESIS BY COUPLING OF FIXED BEDREACTOR AND REACTIVE DISTILLATION COLUMN – PROCESSINTEGRATION ASPECTSQuido Smejkal a , Jiří Kolena b and Jiří Hanika ca QUIDO-Engineering Berlin, Wassermannstr. 52, D-124 89 Berlin,E-mail: info@quido-engineering.com, Fax: +493063924011b VUANCH, a.s., Revoluční 1521/84, CZ-400 01 Ústí nad Labemc Institute of Chemical Process Fundaments, Rozvojova 2, 165 02 Prague 61 IntroductionThe esterification of acetic acid (AA) and ethanol (EtOH) is known and proven process.The most common production strategy consists of simple esterification of both reactioncomponents in a presence of acidic catalyst. The reaction is limited by chemical equilibriumand formed product mixture with rest of reactants should be separated and raw ethyl acetate(EtAc) purified. This issue is complicated by the formation of heterogeneous azeotrope,which amounts less water than produced by chemical reaction. Thus, an integratedesterification process with selective separation of EtAc was demanded, combining chemicalreaction and efficient purification. This process can be reactive distillation 1 .The main objective of this paper is the description of the reaction system of EtAc in bothpre-reactor and reactive-distillation column. The lab scale experiments will be fitted byprocess simulation and the most important results can serve for a scale up of that complicatedreaction system 2 .2 ExperimentalThe experiments were performed in lab scale ethyl acetate unit, consisting of standard onepass packed bed reactor (with partial evaporation of liquid reaction mixture), filled by strongacidic ion-exchanger catalyst and coupled with reactive-distillation column. The reactivedistillationcolumn was compiled from three sections of overall efficiency 13 theoreticalstages (TS), see the scheme in Figure 1. Reaction zone of efficiency 1 TS was sandwichedbetween symmetrical stripping and rectification. The distillate was cooled down in thecondenser and both organic (OP) and water (WP) phases were separated in a decanter, whichwas additionally tempered.112