Process intensification by reactive distillation

Abstract

Reactive distillation stands out as a successful example of a process intensification technology for enhanced chemical manufacture. After almost a century of development, it has achieved a high degree of maturity in terms of design capabilities, the availability of commercial suppliers of hardware and software, and a large variety of processes effectively implemented at the industrial scale. Based upon an extensive review of the classical and recent literature on reactive distillation, this chapter briefly describes the context in which the technology was developed, its current status, and the expected areas for progress in the near future. In addition, the intensification principles behind the operation, its fundamentals, constrains, design methodologies, the optimization approaches, and the control strategies are discussed with fair detail. Finally, a case study on the ethyl acetate production via esterification of acetic acid with ethanol by reactive distillation is presented. It this example, a complete process synthesis procedure is described, from the conceptual design all the way to the process optimization.