Pervaporation Reactor for Esterification of Acetic Acid with n-Butanol: Modeling and Simulation

Pervaporation has emerged as an energy efficient and highly selective separation process in the last few years for the separation of volatile products and for the dehydration of organic chemicals. The productivity and conversion rate can be significantly increased when reaction is coupled with pervaporation, i.e., pervaporation reactor. Techno-economic studies revealed that pervaporation reactors have good market potential in process industries. An esterification reaction between an alcohol and an acid in the presence of a catalyst is the most common reaction system studied in pervaporation reactor. This is reversible reaction and industrial high conversion can be achieved by adding a large excess of acid. A water selective pervaporation membrane can be used in the esterification reactor; which can shift the equilibrium to the right, thus reducing the excess reactants. In the present paper, modeling and simulation of esterification of acetic acid with n-butanol coupled with pervaporation (pervaporation reactor) were carried out. The model was validated using available experimental data and a good agreement was found. Effects of various parameters, such as process temperature, initial mole ratio of acetic acid over n-butanol, and the ratio of the effective membrane area over the volume of reacting mixture and catalyst content, flux on the esterication reaction in pervaporation reactor were discussed. The following optimum conditions were obtained: temperature = 800C, catalyst concentration = 0.0298 kmol/m3, initial molar reactant ratio (acetic acid/n-butanol) = 1.3, ratio of effective membrane area to the reaction volume = 23 m-1, flux = two times of base value. Presented model can be used for the performance study of pervaporation reactor for various esterification reactions.