MODELING OF PERVAPORATION REACTOR FOR ESTERIFICATION

Abstract

separation process for the separation of volatile products and for the dehydration of organic chemicals. Also the productivity and conversion rate can be significantly increased when reaction is coupled with pervaporation i.e. pervaporation reactor. The pervaporation reactor is, specially, the new technology for reaction and separation. It is rather difficult to predict the market potential of processes newly introduced on the market. However, In comparing investment costs, environmental aspects of pervaporation system with those of conventional processes, it can be said that pervaporation reactor will play an important role in the chemical industry for new installments as well as for rehabilitation of existing plants. Techno-economic studies are showing that pervaporation reactors have good market potential. The most common reaction system studied for the application of pervaporation is an esterification reaction between an alcohol and an acid in the presence of a catalyst. In this industrial reversible reaction, high conversion can get by adding a large excess of reactants. By placing a water selective pervaporation membrane in the esterification reactor; equilibrium can shift to the right thus reducing the excess reactants. The model equations for pervaporation reaction were developed based on the reaction kinetics and pervaporation data for the esterification of acetic acid with n-butanol, lactic acid with ethanaol and acetic acid with ethanol. The available experimental data has been used for the modeling purpose. The influence of several process parameters, such as process temperature, initial mole ratio of acid over alcohol, the ratio of the effective membrane area over the volume of reacting mixture catalyst content, and flux, on the esterification have been discussed. The process parameters can be changed in order to attain the optimum values for the pervaporation-esterification coupling. The simulation results were compared with the experimental results and are in excellent agreement. Presented model can be used for every type of esterification reactions in pervaporation reactor.