Simulation And Optimization Of Auxiliary Chemical Reaction Enhanced Reactor Distillation To Produce Ethyl Acetate In Parallel Production Of Glycol

Ethyl acetate is a common green organic solvent,which is mainly used as a solvent,binder,extractant,perfume raw materials and so on.The traditional reactive distillation process to produce ethyl acetate is the use of multi-column structure.Because of the azeotrope of ethyl acetate-ethanol-water,it is difficult to produce higher purity ethyl acetate products for the using of single column structur in the ethyl acetate production process.if you want to get a higher purity products,which need to use multi-column structure process,and the use of multi-tower structure is mainly to eliminate the azeotrope of ethyl acetate-ethanol-water to improve the purity of ethyl acetate.If other methods can be used to eliminate the azeotrope in the system,which can reduce the number of columns,thereby reducing the number of equipment and improve the purity of ethyl acetate.For these problems,the reactive distillation intensified by auxiliary reaction provided a method to reduce the number of devices and improve product purity.In this paper,the reactive distillation process of producing ethyl acetate intensified by ethylene oxide was studied.The main reaction of produce ethyl acetate was intensified by the reaction of ethylene oxide and water.The strengthening process was mainly reflected in the following two aspect:on the one hand,the reaction of ethylene oxide and water eliminated the product of the esterification reaction,which make the chemical equilibrium of the sterification reaction moves in the forward direction,greatly increasing the ethyl acetate content in the product;On the other hand,the chemical reaction rate of the esterification reaction is increased due to eliminated water in the product,and the water does not form an azeotrope in the top of the reactive colunm.The product is changed from ethyl acetate-ethanol-acetic acid-water system to ethyl acetate and Ethylene glycol,while boiling point of the ethyl acetate and ethylene glycol is big difference,which makes the product easy to separation,so that the purity of ethyl acetate in the top of the column was increased.Aspen plus software was used to simulate the process of the ethylene oxide intensified reactive distillation produce ethyl acetate,and the operating parameters of the reaction reactive column were optimized by the Response Surface Methodology,The optimum operating parameters were as follows:The feed amount of acetic acid is 49.8kmol/h,the feed amount of ethanol is 50kmol/h,the feed amount of ethylene oxide is 50.3kmol/h,the feed tray of acetic acid is the fifth plate,the feed tower of ethanol The plate is the 12th plate,the feed tray of ethylene oxide is the 14th plate,the reflux ratio is 3.03,the purity of ethyl acetate at the top of the column is 0.9924,the purity of the bottom ethylene glycol is 0.9955,The energy consumption of the bottom reboiler is 517.8 kW.The functional relationship between the purity of ethyl acetate and the operating parameters was also obtained by Modeling.The process for the production of ethyl acetate by the ethylene oxide intensified reactive distillation is compared with the process without adding ethylene oxide.The eintensified reactive distillation process not only increases the purity of the product,but also reduces the energy consumption.The intensified reactive distillation process is compared with the date of the literature,and the product of the intensified reactive distillation process have higher purity and lower energy consumption.The intensified reactive distillation process also reduces a stripping column,a reboiler,a decanter and a condenser,so that equipment investment has been reduced.