Study On The Decomposition Of Methyl Tert-Butyl Ether

As one of the important basic organic chemical material, isobutene is widely used in producing many chemical products such as rubber, butyl rubber and poly-isobutene. Now the global market requirements of isobutene is more than 20 million t/a.The most widely used technical way to produce isobutene is through MTBE decomposition.This dissertation studied the gas phase decomposition for isobutene through MTBE.Firstly, by using the sodium bisulfate/γ-Al₂O₃ as catalyst (the catalyst of methyl tert-butyl ether decomposition for isobutene), two side reaction kinetics (of the dehydration of methanol gas phase decomposition and isobutene gas phase oligomerization) were studied. Kinetic parameters, k and E_a, were fitted according to the experimental data, and the kinetic equations were then derived.Secondly, the service life of the catalyst used in MTBE decomposition was evaluated through three round of continuous experiments, confirming that the impurity doping in the raw material MTBE is an important reason causing the deactivation of the catalyst. It shows linear downward trend as the using time of the catalyst extends, and the service life of the catalyst can be enhanced by elevating the reaction temperature, thus it can achieve the expected service life for about three months.Finally, this dissertation represented the separation process model of the cracking product using Aspen Plus, and especially focus on the washing process. In order to improve the quality of the product and reduce the costs of the operation, the operation parameters were optimized on the basis of sensitivity analysis, and the simulation result suit well with the data from the experiment.