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Advances in Applied Science Research, 2012, 3 (3):1346-1352




ISSN: 0976-8610
CODEN (USA): AASRFC

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Generalized Modeling and Simulation of Reactive Distillation: Esterification

1
Kuldeep Bhatt and
2
Narendra M. Patel

1
Department of Chemical Engineering (CAPD), L. D. College of Engineering, Ahmedabad
2
Govt. Engineering College, Valsad
______________________________________________________________________________

ABSTRACT

There is an increasing trend of chemical industries toward new processes that should meet requirements such as
generation of nearly zero waste chemicals, less energy, and sufficient uses of product chemicals in various
applications. The reactive distillation provides an attractive alternative for reaction/separation processes with
reversible reactions, especially for etherification and esterification. Esterification is the general name for a
chemical reaction in which two reactants ethylene glycol and acetic acid form an ester as a product. Since the
reaction was occurred in equilibrium and reversible manner, the reaction was become slowly without catalyst.
Production of esters in a reactive distillation column is a promising alternative to the conventional sequential
process. In the present work, the modeling and simulation of the reactive distillation column for the production of
butyl acetate using acetic acid and n-butanol or i-butanol is shown. Thermodynamic aspects of considered system
are discussed and UNIQUAC interaction parameters are given. The reaction was catalyzed heterogeneously by a
strongly acidic ion-exchange resin (Amberlyst-15). The model incorporated reaction kinetics and vapor-liquid non-
idealities into the MESH (Material balance, Equilibrium relationship, Summation equation and Heat balance)
equations. The model was solved with the numerical method coupled with the relaxation method. To ensure the
applicability and reliability of the proposed model, it was validated by comparing simulated results of esterification
reaction (acetic acid and n-butanol) in a reactive distillation column with the pilot plant data i.e. published in
literature. The model was capable of predicting the performance of a reactive distillation column for esterification
reactions.

Keywords: modeling, simulation, reactive distillation, esterification reactions, heterogeneous catalysis.
______________________________________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION

There is an increasing inclination of chemical industries toward new processes that should meet requirements such
as generation of nearly zero waste chemicals, less energy, and sufficient uses of product chemicals in various
applications. Chemical manufacturing companies produce materials based on chemical reactions between selected
feed stocks. In many cases the completion of the chemical reactions is limited by the equilibrium between feed and
product. The process must then include the separation of this equilibrium mixture and recycling of the reactants. The
fundamental process steps of bringing material together, causing them to react, and then separating products from
reactants are common to many processes. In recent decades, a combination of separation and reaction inside a single
unit has become more and more popular. This combination has been recognized by chemical process industries as
having favorable economics for carrying out reaction simultaneously with separation for certain classes of reacting
systems, and many new processes (called reactive separations) have been invented based on this technology.[2,4]
Esterification is the chemical process for making esters, which are compounds of the chemical structure R-COOR',
where R and R' are either alkyl or aryl groups. The most common method for preparing esters is to heat a carboxylic
acid with an alcohol while removing the water that is formed. A mineral acid catalyst is usually needed to make the
reaction occur at a useful rate. Esters can also be formed by various other reactions. These include the reaction of an
alcohol with an acid chloride or an anhydride. The chemical structure of the alcohol, the acid, and the acid catalyst
used in the esterification reaction all effect its rate. Simple alcohols such as methanol and ethanol react very fast
Kuldeep Bhatt et al Adv. Appl. Sci. Res., 2012, 3(3):1346-1352
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because they are relatively small and contain no carbon atom side chains that would hinder their reaction. The most
common acid catalysts are hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid because they are very strong acids. At the end of the
esterification reaction, the acid catalyst has to be neutralized in order to isolate the product.

Reactive Distillation[6]:
The concept of reactive distillation is not new. This technique was first applied in 1920 to esterification process
using homogeneous liquid phase catalyst.

Reactive distillation (RD) is a process in which a catalytic chemical reaction and distillation (fractionation of
reactants and products) occur simultaneously in one single apparatus. Reactive distillation belongs to the so-called
process intensification technologies. From the reaction engineering view point, the process setup can be
classified as a two-phase countercurrent fixed bed catalytic reactor. In the literature this integrated reaction
separation technique is also known as catalytic distillation (CD) or reaction with distillation (RWD). CD is a process
in which a heterogeneous catalyst is localized in a distinct zone of a distillation column. RD is the more general term
for this operation, which does not distinguish between homogeneously or heterogeneously catalyzed reactions in
distillation columns.

Usually, a partially converted reaction mixture, close to chemical equilibrium, leaves the fixed-bed reactor section
and enters the RD column in the fractionating zone to ensure the separation of products from feedstock components.
The fractionated unconverted feedstock components enter the catalytic section in the RD column for additional or
total conversion. The catalyst packing zone is installed in the upper or lower-middle part of the column, with normal
distillation sections above and below.
Figure 1: Processing schemes for reaction where C and D are desired products

Let us considering a reversible reaction scheme: A + B - C + where the boiling points of the components follow
the sequence A, C, D and B. The traditional flow-sheet for this process consists of a reactor followed by a sequence
of distillation columns; see Fig. 1(a). The mixture of A and B is fed to the reactor, where the reaction takes place in
the presence of a catalyst and reaches equilibrium. A distillation train is required to produce pure products C and D.
The unreacted components, A and B, are recycled back to the reactor. In practice the distillation train could be much
more complex than the one portrayed in Fig. 1(a) if one or more azeotropes are formed in the mixture. The
alternative RD configuration is shown in Fig. 1(b).

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The RD column consists of a reactive section in the middle with nonreactive rectifying and stripping sections at the
top and bottom. The task of the rectifying section is to recover reactant B from the product stream C. In the stripping
section, the reactant A is stripped from the product stream D. In the reactive section the products are separated in
situ, driving the equilibrium to the right and preventing any undesired side reactions between the reactants A (or B)
with the product C (or D). For a properly designed RD column, virtually 100% conversion can be achieved.

Model for Reactive Distillation[8]:
The following assumptions are made during the model formulation of catalytic distillation process. Figure 2 shows
schematic diagram of a catalytic distillation unit.
The vapor and liquid are in equilibrium on each stage with negligible heat of mixing of liquid and vapormixtures.
The reactions occur only in the liquid phase, each stage in reaction section can be considered as a perfectly
mixed stirred-tank reactor (CSTR).
The column is operating under adiabatic conditions.
The vapor holdup is assumed to be negligible.

The model equations including mass and energy balances, vapor-liquid equilibrium and summation equation
(MESH equations) are

Mass Balance
a) Overall material balance for equilibrium satage j:

F
]
+ I
]-1
+ I
]+1
+ o
]
R
]
= I
]
+ I
]
(1)

b) Component i material balance:
E
]
Jx
],
Jt
= (z
],
F
]
+x
]-1
I
]-1
+y
]+1
I
]+1
) -(x
],
I
]
+ y
],
I
]
) + o
]
(:
,]
r
],
)
R
=1
(2)

Where, j and i are the stage and component number respectively.

Energy Balance
F
]
_ z
],
(b
],
]
- b
],
L
)
c
=1
+ I
]-1
_ x
]-1,
(b
]-1,
L
- b
],
L
)
c
=1
+ I
]+1
_ y
]+1,
(b
]+1,
v
-b
],
L
)
c
=1
- o
]
w
]
_ (AE
],
R
)r
],
R
=1
=
I
]
_ y
],
(b
],
v
- b
],
L
)
c
=1
(S)

Phase Equilibria
Py = yP
o
x (4)

In the present study, the vapor phase is assumed to be ideal so that the entire fugacity coefficients for the system are
equivalent to unity. The liquid phase non ideality is characterized by the activity coefficients () calculated from the
UNIQUAC method. The saturated vapor pressure P
0
is calculated from the Antoine equation and P is the total
pressure of the system.

Summation
For liquid phase,
x
],
c
=1
= 1 (S)
For vapor phase,
y
],
c
=1
= 1 (6)


Kuldeep Bhatt et al Adv. Appl. Sci. Res., 2012, 3(3):1346-1352
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Figure 2: Schematic diagram of RD and Equilibrium stage.

Reaction and Reaction Kinetics[13]:
Reaction:
In present study, n-butyl acetate synthesis by esterification of n-butanol with acetic acid in a reactive distillation
column is examined.

Acetic acid (HOAc) + n-butanol (BuOH) = n-butyl acetate (BuOAc) + Water (H
2
O)

Reaction Kinetics
Esterification reactions are the reversible reactions of second order. Therefore pseudohomogeneous model can be
written as,

r =
1
m
cut
1
:

Jn

Jt
= k
1
o
H0Ac
o
Bu0H
- k
-1
o
Bu0Ac
o
H20



Temperature dependence of the rate constants is expressed by Arrhenius Law:

k

= k

o
cxp _
-E
A,
RI
] (7)

Solution of Model[8]:
The mathematical model described the steady state behavior of a reactive distillation comprises of a set of nonlinear
algebraic equations. In this work, a sequential solution procedure is proposed in order to solve the derived model
equations. The detailed calculation algorithm is summarized as given in table 1.






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Figure 3: Algorithm of solution model

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Table 1

Quantity
Feed Acetic Acid n-butanol
Feed stage 7 11
xAA 0.9947 0.000
xBuOH 0.000 0.999
xBuOAc 0.000 0.000
xH2O 0.0053 0.001
Column Pressure (KPa) 103.845
Number of Stages 28
Number of reactive stages 16
Catalyst weight (kg) 0.84
Reflux Ratio 1.05

Experimental Results
(Steinigeweg et. Al., 2002)
Simulation Results
(Present Study)
XD (AA) 0.031 0.0399
XD (BuOH) 0.008 0.0099
XD (BuOAc) 0.003 0.0019
XD (H2O) 0.958 0.9481
XB (AA) 0.003 0.0030
XB (BuOH) 0.008 0.0070
XB (BuOAc) 0.969 0.9782
XB (H2O) 0.020 0.0117

A steady state process simulation reactive distillation model was developed from the unsteady state material and
energy balance equations based equilibrium stage model. The model equations were solved numerically using the
Kuldeep Bhatt et al Adv. Appl. Sci. Res., 2012, 3(3):1346-1352
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backward differential formula linear multistep method based on relaxation method. The proposed model has shown
satisfactory results in simulating a reactive distillation column for the esterification reaction.

Notation
a activity of component i.
Cp heat capacity of ideal gas, J/molK.
EA activation energy, J/mol.
Hj liquid holdup on stage j in molar or volumetric quantity.
hL partial molar enthalpy of liquid, J/mol.
hV partial molar enthalpy of vapor, J/mol.
Kb backward rate constant, mol/gs.
kf forward rate constant, mol/gs.
Ki adsorption equilibrium constant for component i.
N number of stages in the column.
ni total molar of component i.
P total pressure of the system.
P
c
critical pressure, kPa.
P
0
saturated vapor pressure, kPa.
Q molecular surface parameter.
Q
y
reboiler duty, kW.
R
g
gas constant.
R molecular volume parameter.
R
j
total numbers of moles generated or consumed through reaction on stage j.
r
j,r
rate of reaction r on stage j, mol/s.
T temperature, K.
T
c
critical temperature, K.
t time, s.
V
c
critical volume, cm3/mol.
v
r,i
stoichiometric coefficient of component i for reaction r.
W weight of catalyst, kg.
X palmitic acid conversion, %.
x
j,i
mole fractions of component i for liquid flow L
j
on stage j.
y
j,i
mole fractions of component i for vapor flow V
j
on stage j.
z
j,i
mole fractions of component i for feed flow F
j
on stage j.
H
v,0
standard heat of vaporization, J/mol.
H
R
heat of reaction, J/mol.

Greeks Letters

j
(0 or 1) refers to reaction occurrence on stage j. When reaction occurs on stage j,
j
is set to unity, otherwise j
is set zero.
fugacity coefficient for the system.
activity coefficient for the system.

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