Intensification of 2-Methyl-1,3-Dioxolane hydrolysis for recovery of ethylene glycol through reactive distillation: Kinetics and process design

摘要

Chemical Looping technology, which consist of aldolization and hydrolysis processes, is proved as a potential and effectively method to separate ethylene glycol (EG) in the coal-based EG production process. However, the problem of acetal hydrolysis is that this reaction is hindered by the boiling points ranking and the chemical equilibrium limitations, which is not the most favorable. In this paper, a potentially sustainable reactive distillation (RD) process is presented for intensification of hydrolysis of 2-Methyl-1,3-Dioxolane (2MD). To accurate design the RD process, the hydrolysis kinetics was measured and a regressed pseudo homogeneous model showed good agreement with experiments. Furthermore, an applicable reactive distillation model was proposed to analyzing the effect of pressure, feed ratio, feed position, reflux ratio, number of reaction plates, rectification plates and stripping plates on the energy consumption and 2MD conversion. Results show that the designed RD process will shift the conventional hydrolysis process towards completion with a 2MD conversion higher than 99.9 %, even without high excess water. The obtained results could give a guide for the pilot scale of recovery EG in coal-based EG production process.