Removing Acetic Acid from Industrial Waste Water by Reactive Distillation

• Main Authors: ChihWei Hsu, 許志維
• Other Authors: Chyi Hwang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 1999
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/61747252660639458289

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 化學工程研究所 === 87 === The catalytic distillation can be useful for enhancing the conversion of an equilibrium-limited chemical reaction by continuously removing products from the reacting system. A reactive distillation column is often used to separate azeotropic mixtures or isomers. The separation is accomplished by adding a reaction entrainer to convert species into others so that the relative volatility between the key components of the reacted mixture becomes larger. The goal of this thesis is to apply the reactive distillation technique to remove acetic acid from industrial waste water. The reaction of acetic acid with methanol which produces methyl acetate and water is chosen for the study. Firstly, the kinetics of the system is studied. By carrying out esterification experiments in a batch reactor, the effects of catalyst selection, internal mass transfer, external mass transfer, catalyst loading, and reaction temperature on reaction rate are investigated. Three different models are established to describe the kinetics of the esterification. Next, in order to modify the reaction rate equations, which are obtained under batch reaction and neglected external mass transfer limitation, the plug-flow-reactor experiments are conducted to investigate the effects of tray design, catalyst-bed construction and operational conditions on the external residence. In addition, we use the commercial software Aspen Plus to perform steady-state simulation and establish the simulation system of a catalytic distillation for the acetic acid esterification in order to evaluate and construct the packed-bed catalytic distillation column in the future.