Energy-Efficient Production of Butyl, Amyl, and Hexyl Acetates in a Single Reactive Distillation

This presentation introduces the first attempt to design a direct sequence including a single reactive distillation (RD) column for multiple esterification reactions of butyl, amyl, and hexyl alcohols with acetic acid. For the feasible integration of the three reactions, the key factor is to completely consume acetic acid and remove a common side-product of water from the minimum boiling heterogeneous azeotropes using a decanter. Since n-butyl alcohol had a negative influence on increasing the water fraction in the returning organic phase from the decanter, only the direct sequence can produce three esters with a high purity by adding n-hexyl alcohol, which has a favorable liquid-liquid phase equilibrium behavior. We demonstrate an economic evaluation of the direct sequence for three esterification reactions in terms of total annual cost. A vapor recompression heat pump was also introduced for further energy savings and lead to the reduction of total energy consumption by 14.3%.