Transesterification of dimethyl carbonate with ethanol in a pilot-scale reactive distillation column

Reactive distillation (RD) is currently used to increase reactant conversion and the purity of the target product. Our work focuses on the application of RD to reaction systems that feature more than one target product. In such systems, an RD column acts as a multipurpose reactor to produce several target products with high selectivities by changing the operating conditions. A promising example of such a multiple-product system is the consecutive transesterification of dimethyl carbonate with ethanol to form the target products ethyl methyl carbonate and diethyl carbonate. This article presents for the first time a comprehensive experimental study on that reaction system in a pilot-sale RD column. Data reconciliation tests confirm the reliability of the experimental results. The effect of decisive operating parameters on the RD column's behavior was extensively studied, and the potential of an RD column to act as a multipurpose reactor was experimentally verified. (C) 2011 Elsevier BM. All rights reserved.