Preparation Of High Pure Mesitylene Using MTBE Tail Gas From C₉ Aromatic Hydrocarbon

Pseudocumene, mesitylene, 1,2,3-trimethylbenzene and durene among theheavy aromatic hydrocarbon from catalytic reformation in oil refinery areimportant fine chemical materials, they have not only high additional value butalso particularly useful property, therefore, the exploiting and utilizing the sourceof the heavy aromatic hydrocarbon are of large commercial benefit and promisingapplication future.Mesitylene is an important material in organic synthesis mainly used toproduce 1,3,5-trimethylaniline, weedicide, antioxygen agent, medicine and manyvarious fine chemical intermediates.Preparation technologies of mesitylene include alkylation, isomerization,crystalization and extraction method, etc, in these methods, propylene alkylationmethod is an advanced technology widely adopted at present, its disadvantage ishigh cost in production process.In this paper, the studies on the preparation of high pure mesitylene usingMTBE tail gas are made in both experimental and theoretical, different factorsaffecting the alkylation reaction to produce mesitylene by MTBE tail gas areinvestigated, the optimal condition of reaction is defined and the alkylationreaction kinetics of different components are studied, moreover, the comparisonbetween C4 raffinate oil and isobutene used for alkylation agent is made too.Experimental results show that MTBE can be used to produce high puremesitylene instead of propylene.