The Basic Research Of Reactive Distillation For Benzaldehyde Production From The Hydrolysis Of Cinnamaldehyde

With the frequent occurrence of food safety incidents, benzaldehyde also attractsmore people’s attention as the second largest consumption of species in the world. Toexplore a cleaner, more efficient and economical production process is very required.In this paper, a modified Rose-Williams still was well connected with adecompression system. To check up the reliability of device, the isobaric vapor-liquidequilibrium(VLE) data of benzene and toluene under atmospheric pressure wasmeasured with the equipment. The experimental data agreed well with the reporteddata, which showed the device was reliable. Then the binary VLE data of the mixtureof cinnamaldehyde and benzaldehyde under10,20and30kPa were measured withthis equipment. The thermodynamic consistency of the experimental data waschecked both with the Herington consistency test and point consistency test of VanNess test, which ensured the reliability of the experimental data. The experimentalVLE data were regressed with Wilson models, nonrandom two-liquid (NRTL) activitycoefficient model and were compared with a group contribution model (UNIFAC).And the regression data was compared with experimental data. The results showedthat Wilson model was more appropriate than NRTL model and UNIFAC model fromthe aspect of the average relative deviation of the vapor composition. However, hedifference was not obvious for the three thermodynamic models on the maximumrelative deviations of the vapor composition. Overall, the three models can be used tocorrelate the binary VLE data of cinnamaldehyde-benzaldehyde under reducedpressure.The high concentration of cinnamaldehyde was obtained from cinnamon oil viavacuum distillation, which was used as the raw material in the reaction. The D296style of ion exchange was used as the catalyst in the reaction of cinnamaldehyde tobenzaldehyde. The effects of main factors such as reaction temperature, the mass ofcatalyst and the amount of water on the yield of cinnamaldehyde were studied bysingle factor experiments. And the optimal operating conditions of reaction obtainedby orthogonal experiments were: reaction temperature70℃, the catalyst mass to thecinnamaldehyde mass4and the water mass to the cinnamaldehyde mass100:6. Underthe optimal conditions, the yield of cinnamaldehyde was82.94%. The hydrolysiskinetics of the reaction of cinnamaldehyde with the catalyst of D296at50℃,60℃,70℃and80℃was studied. The results showed that the reaction was an apparentfirst-order reaction and the activation energy was25.71kJ/mol. Finally, the reactive distillation simulation on the process of obtainedbenzaldehyde from cinnamaldehyde was studied using the Aspen Plus software,which was a chemical process simulation software. The results showed that the massconcentration of benzaldehyde in the bottom product of the reactive distillation towerwas99.9%, which could provide a good reference for the actual process.