Start
Apr 25, 2013 - 17:00
End
Apr 25, 2013 - 18:00
Venue
Room 118 (Creativity Hall) Ground Floor Chemical Engineering Department
Event Type
Title
Studies in Reactive Distillation for the synthesis of Carboxylic Esters
Reactive Distillation (RD) an integration of reaction and separation processes in a single unit has already been proven to have various advantages over conventional process of reaction followed by distillation for many reactions. In the present work advanced applications and configurations of reactive distillation for various esterification reactions are explored and investigated. The production of 2-ethylhexyl acetate by esterification of 2-ethylhexanol with acetic acid in the presence of ion exchange resin (Amberlyst-15) as catalyst is investigated in a RD column using toluene as an entrainer. Toluene helps in removing water efficiently from the reactive zone and maintains the reactive zone temperature below the thermal stability limit of the catalyst. Experiments as well as simulations show that quantitative conversion is achievable using the proposed entrainer based reactive distillation process. The effect of different parameters on the conversion is studied through simulations. The proposed RD process is compared with the conventional process that uses homogeneous /p/TSA as a catalyst and it is shown that the proposed process is more energy efficient and less capital intensive. Further in this work study is done to investigate the potential of reactive distillation for the valorization of fusel oil i.e. a mixture of alcohols obtained as a distillery waste. It is proposed to react these alcohols with acetic acid and separate the esters in pure form. It is expected that reactive distillation (RD) which is a proven intensification strategy for esterification of individual alcohols can also be a promising option for simultaneous esterification of all the alcohols in fusel oil. To evaluate its feasibility and design a unit on large scale kinetic and phase equilibrium models are necessary. Reaction kinetics is experimentally investigated for all the esterification and /trans-/esterification reactions of the different constituents of fusel oil with acetic acid in the presence of cation exchange resin Amberlyst-15. A unified Langmuir-Hinshelwood-Hougen-Watson (LHHW) model is proposed for the reacting system consisting of mixture of all the alcohols and the experimental data is used to estimate the model parameters. The predictions are in agreement with the experimental data for individual alcohols as well as their mixtures. Experiments are performed in a laboratory scale reactive distillation column and a simulation model is validated. Different process alternatives exist and these are compared based on the total energy consumption as the criterion. The potentially cost-effective alternatives are identified.