摘要
The team at the State Key Laboratory for Catalysis Fun-damentals headed by the academician Li Can and the research fellow Yang Qihua at the CAS Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics has realized the manufacture of ethyl-ene glycol (MEG) through catalytic hydration of ethylene oxide (EO) in a nano-reactor featuring high efficiency, green process and energy conservation.
The team at the State Key Laboratory for Catalysis Fun- damentals headed by the academician Li Can and the research fellow Yang Qihua at the CAS Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics has realized the manufacture of ethyl- ene glycol （MEG） through catalytic hydration of ethylene oxide （EO） in a nano-reactor featuring high efficiency, green process and energy conservation. Traditional MEG production process adopts the direct hydration of EO. In order to obtain high MEG selectivity, the reaction system usually needs enormous excess water （with the H20/EO molar ratio equating to 20）, leading to reduction of MEG concentration in the reaction liquid to less than 10% coupled with a high energy consumption in the process of product distillation and purification. In a bid to reduce the energy consumption the acid/caustic catalytic hydration process is generally applied. However, the traditional acid/caustic catalytic hydration process still needs a H20/EO ratio that is too higher than the stoichio- metric ratio to attain a high MEG selectivity.
