The Study Of Feasibility And Conceptual Design Of Reactive Distillation Process Based On Stereo Graphical Method

Reactive distillation combines chemical reaction and distillation separation into asingle unit. This process has many advantages, but it is necessary to judge whether itis possible and beneficial to integrate the reaction and separation steps. Therefore,feasibility study and conceptual design are both important and fundamental to thestudy of reactive distillation. The stereo graphical (SG) method for study of reactivedistillation was developed by innovatively taking temperature into account. Stereograph for study of reactive distillation can be used for feasibility study and conceptualdesign of reactive distillation. Compared with the graphs of previous methods, stereograph can describe the reaction zone of the reactive distillation process accurately.The SG method for study of reactive distillation was established based onfundamentals of the vapor-liquid phase equilibrium and the reaction equilibrium. Thepath of reactive distillation which describes the situation of a reactive distillationprocess is the most important part of the stereo graph. The feasibility of using reactivedistillation in a reaction system can be assessed according to the paths of reactivedistillation, thereby providing useful information such as the feasible range of feedcomposition and the need for a non-reaction zone. Furthermore, the location of thefeed stage relative to the reaction zone can be resolved.In this study, cases of simple ternary system were assumed and many truesystems were used to elaborate the application of the proposed SG method. Comparedwith previous methods, SG method is proved to be better for study of reactivedistillation. The basic rules of feasibility study of simple ternary systems weresummarized. In the view of distillation boundary and distillation zone, the basic rulessummarized for simple ternary system can be extended to any system. And a newsimple and convenient method to find out the distillation boundary was established.The conclusions of feasibility study and conceptual design of three etherificationsystems (MTBE, ETBE and TAME) were summarized.