Simulation Of Separation Process For Acrylic Acid And Esters

Acrylic acid and its esters is an important kind of chemical raw materials, theyare used widely, such as textile、adhesive、coating、paper making、high absorbentresin(SAP),etc. The demand of acrylic acid and its esters will greatly increase withthe development of economy. So the research of acrylic acid and its esters are also ahot topic of researchers.At present, the production technology of acrylic acid (esters) is mature, therehave many production methods, such as propylene oxidation. In recent years,Institute of process engineering, Chinese academy of sciences have developed a newprocess of product acrylic acid (esters), which using acetic acid and formaldehyde asmaterial. The material is low, production process is relatively mild, the process willbring new application for domestic market of downturn acetic acid andformaldehyde. But no matter what a kind of process, it will generate byproduct, needfurther separation and purification for products.The generated byproducts in the production process of acetic acid andformaldehyde were studied. Set up the separation process to simulation andoptimization, get high purity product of propylene for the follow-up production ofacrylic acid (esters).Separation processes used NRTL thermodynamic model. Lack of items in thedepartment of phase equilibrium data obtained through the phase equilibriumexperiments and then got the binary interaction parameters by data fitting.Simulation and optimization of separation processes of methyl acrylate-methanol-water system、methyl acrylate-methyl acetate-methanol-water system、methyl acrylate-methyl-acetate-methanol-water-acrolein-acetone system havebeen researched by ASPEN PLUS software which is a sizable chemical engineeringprocess simulation software. The extraction tower、 rectifying tower、 reducedpressure distillation、extractive distillation column have been more deeply optimized. The effect of some various operating parameters such as theoretical number、feedstage、reflux ratio on the product purity have been researched.After research of the separation systems, determined the optimal processparameters and got the simulation results. This will be useful for the plantproduction and operation.