Experimental Study And Process Simulation Of Sec-butyl Alcohol Produced By Transesterification In A Catalytic Distillation Column

Sec-butyl alcohol is widely used in industry,and it is often used as solvents that soluble in water and benzene and can be arbitrary miscibility with ethanol, ethyl ether. In industry sec-butyl alcohol can also be used as methanol solvent as a component for improve the gasoline octane number. And sec-butyl alcohol is also production material of plasticizer, dressing agent and herbicide, etc. More than 90% of the industrial sec-butyl alcohol were used as the chemical synthesis of important chemical products—methyl ethyl ketone.At present indirect synthesis method and the direct synthesis method are traditional method of preparation of sec-butyl alcoho, but new methods of preparation of sec-butyl alcohol process need to be explored because the existing preparation methods have shortcomings of high energy consumption and low one-way conversion rate,etc.The raw material of sec-butyl acetate is butene components of C4 resource that is the by-product of the refining units,which easy and get cheap. In this paper, the transesterification by reactive distillation between sec-butyl acetate and methanol was studied. And reactive kinetics was researched in batch stirred tank reactor, which measured by using data processing software.On the basis of dynamics research, the process of reactive distillation was simulated by using the chemical process simulation software, which respectively examines the effect of reflux ratio, feed molar ratio of methanol and acetic acid methyl ester as well as feed position on reactive distillation. The experimental results concluded that the best operating conditions for catalytic distillation process are as follows: reflux ratio 2; mole ratio of alcohol and ester 1.5:1; sec-butyl acetate feed on the 6th stage, methanol feed on the 18 th stage. Under the condition, the purity of methyl acetate at the top of tower and sec-butyl alcohol at the tower kettle up to 99.0 % and 85.9 % respectively, and the conversion of sec-butyl acetate up to 94.9%.The experimental study on sec-butyl acetate and methanol by transesterification in the catalytic distillation column homemade, and the experimental value and analog value very well.In this paper the transesterification by reactive distillation method has the advantages of high conversion rate, low energy consumption, good selectivity and high product purity,etc.