Research On Reactive Distillation With Side Reactor For Methylal Production

As a new green solvent, methylal has of wide application foreground. There are three methods have been used in methylal industry, traditional method, reactive distillation and reactive distillation with side reactor. Reactive distillation with side reactor can catch reactive distillation when his operating conditions are optimized. Few researches are focused on the optimization of operating conditions for this new operation mode which has more conditions influence on product quality.A novel process, reaction distillation with side reactors and make up feeding, was studied in this paper. First, this process was simulated and contrasted with reactive distillation with side reactors by ASPEN PLUS. Then, the novel process was studied by experiment and was also contrasted with convention process.The result show that the upper side reactor needs much more methanol and feeding the upper side reactor will be more efficient. When the quantity of make up feeding is about 1/20 of formaldehyde quantity in the feed, the top product purity will be the highest. For this new process, as the reaction process going, formaldehyde will be fewer which will decrease the quantity of formaldehyde and methanol azeotrope, then surplus methanol will rise to the top of the tower which will decrease the mass fraction of top product, so increase the number of stages of rectifying section will promote the reaction process but will decrease the mass fraction of top product, this is different to the conventional process. The rate of inversion of the new process is 1.3% higher than the conventional process. Contrast to the reactive distillation with side reactors, the mass fraction of top product of the reactive distillation process with side reactors and make up feeding is 0.1% higher. The energy consumption of the new process is less than the conventional process, the reboiler energy consumption is 0.2% less and the condenser energy consumption is 0.3% less.