Ethyl Acetate Process System Energy Optimization

Ethyl acetate is one of the most important chemical solvents;nowadays it has a very large demand quantity in the whole world, especially in China. The way of synthesizing ethyl acetate is via esterification of acetic Acid (HAc)with Ethanol (EtOH), four columns involved in the process. Materials should be boiloffed and condensed for four times, also with the unreasonable esterification, energy consumption is very high.In this paper, we take four following methods which are reactive distillation, improvement in seperation, optimization of heat exchanger's network, catalyst system into account to carry out energy consumption analysis and optimization.The results indicate that energy load is largely lowered in the column of esterification, and energy for cooling in the top of the column reduced 257.3kw, about 2.06million yuan every year, improvement of heat exchanger's network with aid of Aspen Pinch and Pinch Design method ascertains the pinch location whose temperature is 75℃ in this existing network, and the new heatexchanger's network where energy consumption reduced about 2000kCal/his set up. The study shows significance for lowering the energy consumption and heightening the efficiency of production.