Separation and purification of ethyl acetate from its reaction mass: proposal for downstream distillation sequence and validation

This work has performed simulation and experimentation of separating the reaction mixture of the ethyl acetate manufacture by Fischer esterification. Assuming stoichiometric proportion of reactants, mixture with equilibrium composition was subjected to separation. Simulation in the Aspen plus environment using RadFrac module with EQ model was performed. To obtain a range of parameters and variables, sensitivity analysis was performed. Economic analysis was also performed. Experimentation was done to verify the results of simulation using distillation and extractive distillation to obtain the streams with highest purity and unreacted reactants were separated into pure form. A complete flowsheet for separation and purification is suggested.