Design And Control Of Reactive Distillation Process For N-Butyl Acetate Production Using Ionic Liquid As Catalyst

N-butyl acetate is a kind of very important organic solvent with quite wide industrial applications. Researches for the production of n-butyl acetate mainly involved the catalyst used and process equipment improvements. As a kind of new green catalyst, ionic liquids caused wide concern because of its mild reaction condition, no corrosion to equipment, and the easy subsequent separation and the advantages of long service life. Reaction distillation technology is more and more widely used for its collection of reaction and separation equipment, which can timely separation products and greatly improve the reaction conversion rate, especially for the reaction balance limited esterification.This paper combined with the latest research progress in these two aspects, used the computer simulation method to study the reaction distillation process for production of n-butyl acetate using bronsted acid ionic liquid pyridinium hydrogensulfate ([Hpy][HSO4]) as the catalyst.First of all, the real solvents like conductor shielding model (COSMO-RS) was used to predict vapor liquid equilibrium data and regress the binary interaction parameters with the NRTL model to supplement the lack of vapor liquid equilibrium experimental data between ionic liquid and reaction system four substances. Compared with the similar system experimental data, the COSMO-RS model is relatively credible. Secondly, the process structure was designed on the basis of physical property analysis, which including a reaction distillation column connected a phase splitter overhead and a flash tank was used to the separation of n-butyl acetate and catalyst, realizing the recycling of ionic liquid and continuous production of n-butyl acetate. The annual cost (TAC) analysis was used to optimize the process structure parameters. Finally, the dynamic characteristic was tested to design the entire process control strategy. Two different cascade control structures were developed to guarantee the product quality indicators. The relative gain matrix method was used to analyze the interaction of the control loops. The dynamic simulation results suggest that the control scheme with composition controller is timely and effective.