Study On The Hydrolysis Of Methyl Acetate In Reactive Dividing Wall Column

Reactive dividing wall column is a high degree of coupling technology which is integrated with dividing wall column, reactive distillation and separation. This new technology has the advantage of high thermodynamically efficient, low operation energy consumption and low equipment investment. The influence of reflux ratio, liquid split and the molar ratio of water/methyl acetate on the operational performance of the device was studied through experiments in laboratory and process simulation in this paper.Firstly, the kinetics of the hydrolysis of methyl acetate was measured in a batch stirred reactor with concentrated sulfuric acid as catalyst, and the influence of reactive temperature, the loading of catalyst and the molar ratio of water/methyl acetate on the reaction rate were researched. The kinetic equation based on the per catalyst quality for describing the hydrolysis of methyl acetate was obtained.With the fundamental parameters provided by the experiment of the kinetics of the methyl acetate hydrolysis, the process of methyl acetate hydrolysis in reactive distillation column and reactive dividing wall column were simulated by the software of PROâ…¡, and the influence of reflux ratio, liquid split and the molar ratio of water/ methyl acetate on the conversion of methyl acetate and the methanol content in the side product were studied, the optimal technological conditions were obtained. The principle of energy saving was also studied.Finally, A reactive dividing wall column was designed to study the influence of reflux ratio, liquid split and water/methyl acetate molar ratio on the conversion of methyl acetate and the methanol content in the side product. The results show that the molar ratio of water/methyl acetate and reflux ratio is the most important factor. The conversion of methyl acetate increases remarkably as the reflux ratio and the molar ratio of water/methyl acetate increase, the conversion of methyl acetate increase slowly when reflux ratio and the molar ratio of water/methyl acetate increased to a certain extent. The conversion of methyl acetate first increased and then decreased as liquid split increase. The simulation values and the experiment values tally.