Combined Extractive Distillation and Catalytic Distillation to Hydrolyze Methyl Acetate

摘要

Extractive distillation and catalytic distillation, tow single units in conventional distillation, were combined to hydrolyzc methyl acetate (McOAc). In the combined technology, an efficient and convenient type of catalyst packing was put forward and the effects of three dominant factors were examined, including mole ratio of water to MeOAc (R_(W/M)), space velocity (S_V) and volume ratio of reflux to feed (R_(L/F)). The experimental results demonstrate that conversion of McOAc increases remarkably as R_(W/M) value enhances, but weight ratio of acetic acid to water (HAc/H2O) decreases dramatically at the same time. Higher L/F ratio and lower space velocity are helpful to the hydrolysis process, and both factors arc limited to avoid flooding. Most experiments were conducted with L/F ratio less than 4.0 and space velocity less than 0.4 h~(-1), as R_(W/M) = 5.6, S_V = 0.35 h~(-1) and R_(L/F) = 3.0, conversion of MeOAC reaches 92% and HAc/H2O ratio in the hydrolyzate is higher than 0.62. A mathematical model was established also to simulate the hydrolysis process. The simulation results are in fair coincidence with the experimental data.