Simulation And Analysis Of Reactive Distillation Using GPROMS Platform

In recent years, great progress has been made in the research and application of reactive distillation. The modeling and simulation of reactive distillation is one of the hot spots, and the traditional model such as RadFrac in Aspen plus has been widely used for general cases. However, due to the difference of vapor and liquid flow track between the MP-III type packing and traditional packing, the process with MP-â…¢type packing is very different. Consequently, the RadFrac model in Aspen plus can't be employed to simulate this special process. In this work, a reactive distillation column model with MP-III type packing has been developed by employing gPROMS platform.The gPROMS platform offers excellent modeling capacity but it doesn't have a powerful physical property database. However, Aspen plus has an excellent physical property database but its flexibility for special unit process or configuration is very weak. Therefore, a new simulation platform combining gPROMS and Aspen plus under CAPE-OPEN standard is developed. In the new platform, the process model in built in gPROMS, all physical properties are calculated and supplied by Aspen plus through API of CAPE-OPEN. The developed simulation platform is applied to simulate the reactive distillation process of dehydration of tert-butyl alcohol where the unstable of liquid phase is considered.