(219j) Transesterification of Isopropyl Acetate and Methanol By Reactive Distillation

A reactive distillation process for the production of isopropanol by transesterification of isopropyl acetate with methanol is presented. The reaction has been catalyzed homogeneously by the sodium methoxide. The reaction kinetics was investigated in this work. The chemical equilibrium constant and the kinetic parameters for a homogeneous kinetic model are obtained from kinetic experimental data. Based on the fixed point analysis of the residue curve maps (RCMs), the feasibility of reactive distillation process for the transesterification of isopropyl acetate and methanol was studied. The analysis results showed that the reactive distillation process for producing isopropanol proposed in this work was feasible under certain conditions. Therefore, the reactive distillation experiments were conducted at several operation conditions (including reboiler duty, reflux ratio, space velocity, catalytic amount and reactant ratio). An equilibrium stage model of the reactive distillation was used to describe the experiments quantitatively. The simulation results are agreement with the experimental data. Subsequently, the reactive distillation model was used to determine the influence of important operating and design factors such as feed location, numbers of reactive stages and reflux ratio on reactive distillation process. On the basis of experiment and simulation studies, the appropriate process conditions were obtained. Finally, a new process for synthesis of isopropanol, combining reactive distillation with product separation columns, has been determinated.