Experimental Study And Process Simulation Of N-butyl Acetate Produced By Transesterification In A Catalytic Distillation Column

As a chemical raw material methyl acetate (MeOAc) mainly is used as a fast-drying solvent of nitro-cellulose and cellulose acetate; it can also be raw materials for paint, leather and spices, and for oil extraction etc., but comparing with other esters in the same race, its demand is not great. In industrial production, it is often used as a by-product, such as in process of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) with a large number of by-products of methyl acetate. It is estimated that it will produce 1.5 to 1.7 tons of MeOAc for each ton product of PVA. At present, PVA manufacturers are used to hydrolyze methyl acetate, because acetic acid and methanol can be used for the production of PVA as raw materials. N-butyl acetate is a colorless, transparent liquid, which is important organic solvent, extractant and dehydrating agent, widely used in industry. In this paper, methyl acetate will be converted into n-butyl acetate by transesterification, which can provide a more efficient use of methyl acetate.In this paper, reaction kinetics was experimentally studied and pre exponential factor and the activation energy were calculated for follow-up experimental research and simulation. Then, catalytic distillation experiment was done while changing operating conditions to inspect the influence of feed mode, feed composition, reflux ratio and total feed flow on conversion of methyl acetate. According to the results the best operating conditions have been chosen. Best operating conditions for catalytic distillation process are as follows: reflux ratio 10; mole ratio of alcohol and ester 3:1; total feed flow 22mol/h; n-butanol feed at the upper part, methyl acetate feed at the lower part.Process simulation data done by Aspen Plus was compared with experimental data. The error being within an acceptable bound, the results of process simulation are credible. After the simulation process further optimized, the results can provide guidance for following experimental study. The results revealed that the error between the simulation and experiment was less than 8% within an acceptable range, so the simulation is reliable. By respectively changing the feed position of n-butanol and methyl acetate, results showed that the greater the length of reaction part was, the higher the conversion rate would be. Increasing the theory plate number of reaction part by adding certain height of packing in actual experiment can increase the conversion rate of methyl acetate.