Catalytic Distillation For The Synthesis Of Tert-Butyl Alcohol With Structured Catalytic Packing

Tert-butyl alcohol is an important fine organic chemical that can be used gasoline additive to improve gasoline octane number, for the use of alternative fuels, performance and cost-tert-butyl alcohol is better than the current use of ethanol, has become more promising ethanol fuel alternatives. Ethanol is used in food fermentation methods used to acquire, not suitable for China's national conditions and long-term development, while tert-butyl alcohol can be obtained by the cheap water and isobutene-containing C4 hydrocarbon refinery catalytic cracking as raw material mixed reaction-separation. Thus, for the use of catalytic synthesis of tert-butyl alcohol distillation technology research, for improving our refinery mixed C4 hydrocarbon resources in an integrated and effective utilization and development of gasoline alternatives of great significance.This improvement of traditional production processes, the catalytic distillation for the synthesis of tert-butyl alcohol (TBA) with hydration of isobutene from a C4 mixture was proposed, in which a new-type of structured catalytic packing was employed in the reaction section of catalytic distillation column. First, the reaction kinetics over an ion-exchange resin embedded with and without catalyst bag has been determined in a batch stirred reactor, respectively. The kinetic equation and effective factor of the structured catalytic bag were incorporated into the mathematical model of a catalytic distillation column. Then, using RadFrac, one model of ASPEN Plus software to simulate and optimize the entire process to determine the optimal operating conditions (such as reflux ratio, feed location, etc.), optimize the system-wide energy consumption, to find possible multiple steady states. It was found that in the improved process the conversion of isobutene was from 60% to 67.7%, and the total heat duty on reboilers per amount of production decreased by 4.72%. Finally, the use of cold model experimental apparatus to measure the transmission characteristics of structured packing, including hydrodynamics and mass transfer performance, and with the traditional catalysts in bulk packing pressure drop compared. The results showed that when the packing density of a certain spray when the pressure drop tower with the gas kinetic energy factor increases; when the gas velocity and a certain time, the tower of the pressure drop along with the increase of the density of the liquid spray by great. Compared by calculating the pressure drop structured packing is far less than the bulk of solid catalyst packing pressure drop, fully reflects the low pressure drop structured packing characteristics.