MODELING AND SIMULATION OF REACTIVE DISTILLATIOk FOR PRODUCTION OF ETHYL ACETATE

Abstract

This work involves development of design of reactive distillation column system for the production of ethyl acetate. Which is mostly used as solvents in paints and coatings industry, production of ink and it us used as solvent in many chemical industries. Esterification of acetic acid with ethanol may be executed to produce ethyl acetate. In this work, a reactive distillation (RD) column with packing of catalyst cation exchange resins is applied to analyze the yield of Ethyl acetate. Mathematical models of reactive distillation are based on the conventional distillation process with addition of some equations and constraints to reactions used traditionally. Column simulations performed here using Aspen Plus with RadFrac model which shows good matching with experimental data for the Ethyl acetate system. A deep analysis is performed to determine the effects of key design and operating parameters on column performance and, subsequently, an optimal column configuration is obtained.