Thermodynamic And Kinetic Study Of Cyclopentyl Methyl Ether (CPME) Synthesis

Cyclopentyl methyl ether (CPME) is a new kind of environmental protection of solvent created by ZEON corporation, can be used to replace traditional ether solvents. CPME has many outstanding advantages, market foreground is very vast.The etherification of methanol with cyclopentene catalyzed by the strong acid cation exchange resin was developed in a fixed bed reactor. The optimum reaction conditions, the thermodynamic and kinetic data for the synthesis of CPME were studied in this paper.The conversion of cyclopentene and the selectivity of CPME along with time was obtained under different temperature, space velocity and molar ratio. Considering these factors, the optimum conditions were gained. The optimum temperature is 393.15?398.15K, the optimum space velocity is 0.7295h-1, the optimum molar ratio between methanol and cyclopentene is 1?1.2. The stability of catalyst under experimental conditions were studied, to ensure the reliability of experimental data.The thermodynamic experiments were developed between 388.15?403.15K. The enthalpies, the entropies, the Gibbs free energies of the reaction and the theoretical equilibrium constant were calculated. The experimental equilibrium constant was calculated by using activity coefficient instead of concentration.The homogeneous reaction mechanism, Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) type mechanism and Eley-Rideal (E-R) type mechanism were used to simulating the reaction rata equations, to explore the mechanism of the synthesis of CPME. The result showed that equations based on the L-H type mechanism was best fit with the system. Thus, the hypothesis of two activity sites on the catalyst is more reliable. The activation energy evaluated by L-H model was 123.46 KJ/mol.