Simulation And Optimization Of The Process To Product Ethyl Acetate By Fluidized Catalyst Reaction Distillation

Ethyl acetate is an excellent edible spices and organic solvents, which has been applied to a variety of production. Nowadays in our country, the common method of producing ethyl acetate is the esterification in which concentrated sulfuric acid is used as catalyst. There are still some existing disadvantages though it is a mature technology, such as side reactions and corrosion of equipment. Compared to the traditional process, catalytic distillation process not only simplifies the process, reduces operating costs and investment in equipment, but also improves the product yield and selectivity, but the method of catalyst packing requires both catalytic and separation, so that the physical properties of the catalyst is very demanding, hindering the efficient catalysts in catalytic distillation. Fluidized catalytic distillation technology ground the catalyst into a fine powder, together with the material flow in the catalytic distillation column. It avoids the problems of catalyst packing. Nowadays, simulation of fluidized catalytic distillation technology is still blank, the establishment able to accurately describe the mathematical model of the process for the fluidized catalytic distillation technology to promote the development and application of technology is necessary.Based on the new relaxation method to solve the basic equations of reactive distillation, Tamir model to correct vapor phase composition and NRTL equation to calculate liquid phase activity coefficient, a mathematical model was developed to describe the fluidized catalyst reaction distillation via MATLAB. After the optimization of plate number of rectifying section, feed stage of ethanol, plate number of reaction section, mole ratios of acetic acid to ethanol, reflux rate, reflux compositions and feed stage of reflux, the optimum process conditions were determined that the total plate number is22, effective packing height is2.31m, while the plate numbers of rectifying section and reaction section were4and18respectively, and the feed stage of ethanol is19, mole ratios of acetic acid to ethanol is3:1, the amount of the catalyst is0.0500gcatatyst·gacetic acid-1, reflux rate is2.5mol/h (decanter reflux rate is0.9mol/h, dehydration ethyl acetate reflux rate is1.6mol/h), feed stage of dehydration ethyl acetate reflux is the top of the column. Using the optimized process conditions to simulate, the mass fraction of ethyl acetate was obtained as94.24%, productrate is0.6162mol/h.