Energy saving reactive distillation column for simultaneous esterification of C4~C6 alcohols and separation

Abstract

This study proposes a reactive distillation column process for the simultaneous production of pure esters us-ing alcohol mixtures and reports the energy saving. Removal of the product water from the azeotropic mixture (UN) by liquid-liquid separation in a six-component system (including a common reactant acetic acid, and a common product water and each alcohol and ester product) induces two esterification reactions and produces a pure ester product. For the six-component reaction system, reactive dividing wall columns are introduced and VRHP is introduced into the upper reactive dividing wall column (URDWC) for further energy savings. VRHP with URDWC process can reduce operating cost to 62.5% of URDWC without the VRHP. Also, we propose a process in which three different ester products are separated including three esterification reactions in an 8 com-ponents and 3 reaction system, and the efficiency of each process is verified