Purification of Lactic Acid by Heterogeneous Catalytic Distillation Using Ion-exchange Resins

The purification of lactic acid based on the esterification of raw lactic acid from fermentation broth and then the catalytic distillation hydrolysis of methyl lactate simultaneously to achieve pure lactic acid is reported. The esterification kinetics of lactic acid with methanol catalyzed by strong-acid cation-exchange resins (Amberlyst-15,D001, D002, NKC, 002) was studied under the condition that simulates the real catalytic environment. Experimental results were correlated by a Langmuir-Hinselwood model and the nonideality of the solution was taken into account by using activities calculated by the universal quasichemical functional group activity coefficient (UNIFAC) method.A good agreement between the model and the experimental data was achieved. Continuous purification experiments were conducted to find the optimum column configuration and operation condition for the system. The effects of various parameters, e.g. the length of different section of the column, feed rate and ratio of reactants, packing material and catalyst type, were studied. This novel system shows good separation results in lab scale, and is potential for industrial application.

Study on Hydrolysis of Methyl Acetate in a Catalytic Distillation Column

A nonequilibrium stage model was used to simulate countercurrent multicomponent catalytic distillation processes for methyl acetate hydrolysis. Computations of stage efficiencies or height equivalent to a theoretical plate (HETP) were entirely avoided by this model. The consistency of simulated results and experimental data in conversions and concentration of each component along a column indicates that the model predicts the actual process well. The influences of operating parameters on hydrolytic conversions, such as feed molar ratios, feed locations, feed and reflux rates, heights of reactive and stripping sections, were analyzed adequately by simulating calculations. A good operating mode was then obtained, which is helpful to the development of a new process.

A new green process for biodiesel production from waste oils via catalytic distillation using a solid acid catalyst-Modeling, economic and environmental analysis

The challenges in the chemical processing industry today are environmental concerns, energy and capital costs. Catalytic distillation(CD) is a green reactor technology which combines a catalytic reaction and separation via distillation in the same distillation column. Utilization of CD in chemical process development could result in capital and energy savings, and the reduction of greenhouse gases. The efficacy of CD and the economic merits, in terms of energy and equipment savings, brought by CD for the production of biodiesel from waste oil such as yellow grease is quantified. Process flow sheets for industrial routes for an annual production of 10 million gallon ASTM purity biodiesel in a conventional process(reactor followed by distillation) and CD configurations are modeled in Aspen Plus. Material and energy flows, as well as sized unit operation blocks, are used to conduct an economic assessment of each process. Total capital investment, total operating and utility costs are calculated for each process. The waste oil feedstock is yellow grease containing both triglyceride and free fatty acid. Both transesterification and esterification reactions are considered in the process simulations. Results show a significant advantage of CD compared to a conventional biodiesel processes due to the reduction of distillation columns, waste streams and greenhouse gas emissions. The significant savings in capital and energy costs together with the reduction of greenhouse gases demonstrate that process intensification via CD is a feasible and new green process for the biodiesel production from waste oils.

Simulation of Suspension Catalytic Distillation for Synthesis of Linear Alkylbenzene

Suspension catalytic distillation (SCD) has been developed recently as an innovative technology in catalytic distillation. In this paper, a brief introduction to SCD is given and an equilibrium stage (EQ) modei is developed to simulate this new process for synthesis of linear alkylbenzene (LAB) from benzene and 1-dodecene. Since non-ideality of this reaction systern is not strong, EQ modei developed could be applied to it successfully. Simulation results agree well with experimental data, and indicate some characteristics of SCD process as an advanced technology for the production of LAB: 100% conversion of olefins, low temperature (90-100℃) and low benzene/olefin mole ratio.

Optimizing the Synthesis of Ethyl tert-Butyl Ether in Continuous Catalytic Distillation Column Using New Ion Exchange Resin Catalyst

Liquid phase synthesis of one of the important fuel oxygenate, ethyl tert-butyl ether （ETBE）, from etha-nol and tert-butyl alcohol （TBA） has been studied in catalytic distillation column （CDC） using ion exchange resin catalyst CT-145H. A packed CDC of 1.2 m height and 50 mm diameter with indigenously developed reactive sec-tion packing was used to generate experimental data. Effect of different key variables on product purity in distillate, was investigated to find the optimum operating conditions for ETBE synthesis. The optimum conditions for 0.2 kg·s-1 of ethanol feed were found：reboiler duty of 375 W, molar feed ratio of 1︰1.3 of reactants, and reflux ratio of 7. Concentration profiles for each component along each column section at optimum conditions were also drawn. Neither output nor input multiplicity was observed at experimental conditions.

Investigation on catalytic distillation for ethyl acetate production with different catalytic packing structures

The catalytic packing is the core component of the catalytic distillation,and how the catalyst exists in the packing has significant influence on the process.To investigate the effect of catalyst packings on the catalytic distillation process,the classical ethyl acetate reactive distillation system was utilized,and a supported catalytic packing(SCP)was prepared in comparison with the conventional tea-bag catalytic packing(TBP).Laboratory scale experiments showed that the ethyl acetate conversion of the SCP was superior to the TBP at a low catalyst loading.The effects of reaction kinetics,mass transfer performance and actual catalytic efficiency of the packings on this process were regarded as reasons and studied by combining the experiments and numerical simulation.Results suggested that the relatively immediate“in-situ separation”caused by the rapid reaction kinetics and better mass transfer performance of SCP may be a main reason for the difference of the conversion.

Simulation for Synthesis of TAME with Catalytic Distillation Process

The triangular matrixing modified relaxation model equation was established for the syn-thesis of TAME with catalytic distillation process, and a new accelerated convergence technique was adopted. The simulation on the synthesis of TAME showed that the calculated data agreed well with the experimental results.

Simulation of Tert-Butyl Alcohol Forming Process by Slurry Catalytic Distillation with Custom Kinetic Program

Producing tert-butyl alcohol (TBA) by slurry catalytic distillation is a green new technology. In order to provide reference data for this production process, this paper applied advanced simulation software Aspen to simulate and optimize the slurry catalytic distillation process of producing TBA. And the kinetics equation of isobutylene hydration which is catalyzed by cation exchange resin in continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) is used to display the reaction process. Appropriate theoretical plate number of rectifying section, reaction section and stripping section, reflux ratio and liquid hold-up are obtained by the analog computation. Under this process condition, the conversion rate of isobutylene is 82.53%;the mole fraction of TBA in the bottom discharging is 82.5%.

Non-equilibrium model for catalytic distillation process

A new improved tri-diagonal method was developed for the non-equilibrium stage model of the catalytic distillation by coupling consumptive reaction coefficient.The reactions in the distillation column were divided into generative reaction and consumptive reac-tion.The non-equilibrium stage model was introduced for the catalytic distillation process of the dimethyl car-bonate(DMC)synthesis by urea methanolysis over solid based catalyst,and the improved tri-diagonal method was used to solve the model equations.Comparison of pre-dicted results with experiment data shows that the mean relative error of the yield of DMC was 3.78%under dif-ferent conditions such as different operating pressures and reaction temperatures.The improved tri-diagonal matrix method could avoid the negative values of the liquid com-positions during the calculations and restrain the fluc-tuation of compositions by slowing down the variations of the values in the iteration.The modeling results show that the improved tri-diagonal method was appropriate for system containing a wide range of boiling point com-ponents and a different rate of reactions.

Microchannel reactive distillation for the conversion of aqueous ethanol to ethylene

Here we demonstrate the proof-of-concept for microchannel reactive distillation for alcohol-to-jet application:combining ethanol/water separation and ethanol dehydration in one unit operation.Ethanol is first distilled into the vapor phase,converted to ethylene and water,and then the water co-product is condensed to shift the reaction equilibrium.Process intensification is achieved through rapid mass transfer-ethanol stripping from thin wicks using novel microchannel architectures-leading to lower residence time and improved separation efficiency.Energy savings are realized with integration of unit operations.For example,heat of condensing water can offset vaporizing ethanol.Furthermore,the dehydration reaction equilibrium shifts towards completion by immediate removal of the water byproduct upon formation while maintaining aqueous feedstock in the condensed phase.For aqueous ethanol feedstock(40%_w),71% ethanol conversion with 91% selectivity to ethylene was demonstrated at 220℃,600psig,and 0.28 h^(-1) wt hour space velocity.2.7 stages of separation were also demonstrated,under these conditions,using a device length of 8.3 cm.This provides a height equivalent of a theoretical plate(HETP),a measure of separation efficiency,of ^(3).3 cm.By comparison,conventional distillation packing provides an HETP of ^(3)0 cm.Thus,9,1 × reduction in HETP was demonstrated over conventional technology,providing a means for significant energy savings and an example of process intensification.Finally,preliminary process economic analysis indicates that by using microchannel reactive distillation technology,the operating and capital costs for the ethanol separation and dehydration portion of an envisioned alcoholto-jet process could be reduced by at least 35% and 55%,respectively,relative to the incumbent technology,provided future improvements to microchannel reactive distillation design and operability are made.

Design of process and control scheme for cyclohexanol production from cyclohexene using reactive distillation

Cyclohexanol is a commonly used organic compound.Currently,the most promising industrial process for synthesizing cyclohexanol,by cyclohexene hydration,suffers from a low conversion rate and difficult separation.In this paper,a three-column process for catalytic distillation applicable in the hydration of cyclohexene to cyclohexanol was established to solve these.Simulation with Aspen Plus shows that the process has good advantages,the conversion of cyclohexene reached 99.3%,and the product purity was>99.2%.The stable operation of the distillation system requires a good control scheme.The design of the control scheme is very important.However,at present,the reactive distillation process for cyclohexene hydration is under investigation experimentally and by steady-state simulation.Therefore,three different plant-wide control schemes were established(CS1,CS2,CS3) and the position of temperature sensitive stage was selected by using sensitivity analysis method and singular value decomposition method.The Tyreus-Luyben empirical tuning method was used to tune the controller parameters.Finally,Aspen Dynamics simulation software was used to evaluate the performance of the three control schemes.By introducing ΔF±20% and χ_(ENE)±5%,comparison the changes in product purity and yield of the three different control schemes.By comparison,we can see that the control scheme CS3 has the best performance.

A generalized CFD model for evaluating catalytic separation process in structured porous materials

A hybrid multiphase model is developed to simulate the simultaneous momentum, heat and mass transfer and heterogeneous catalyzed reaction in structured catalytic porous materials. The approach relies on the combination of the volume of fluid(VOF) and Eulerian–Eulerian models, and several plug-in field functions. The VOF method is used to capture the gas–liquid interface motion, and the Eulerian–Eulerian framework solves the temperature and chemical species concentration equations for each phase.The self-defined field functions utilize a single-domain approach to overcome convergence difficulty when applying the hybrid multiphase for a multi-domain problem. The method is then applied to investigate selective removal of specific species in multicomponent reactive evaporation process. The results show that the coupling of catalytic reaction and interface species mass transfer at the phase interface is conditional, and the coupling of catalytic reaction and momentum transfer across fluid–porous interface significantly affects the conversion rate of reactants. Based on the numerical results, a strategy is proposed for matching solid catalyst with operating condition in catalytic distillation application.