Pervaporation-based
hybrid processes have been investigated to
overcome the drawbacks of equilibrium-limited reactions. Pervaporation
processes are strongly recommended for heat-sensitive products and
azeotropic mixtures as in the butyl acrylate system case, since pervaporation
can operate at lower temperatures than distillation. In this work,
experimental pervaporation data for multicomponent mixtures in the
absence of reaction were measured for the compounds involved in the
esterification reaction of acrylic acid with n-butanol
at different temperatures: 323, 353, and 363 K. A commercial tubular
microporous silica membrane from Pervatech was used which is highly
selective to water, and its performance was evaluated by studying
several parameters, like the selectivity, permeate fluxes, driving
force of species, and separation factor. The effects of temperature
and feed composition were assessed for binary, ternary, and quaternary
mixtures. Increasing the temperature increases significantly the total
permeate flux as well as the separation factor, which is higher for
quaternary mixtures. The presence of butyl acrylate and acrylic acid
reduces the total permeate flux since these molecules hinder the water
permeation. The permeance of each species was correlated with temperature
according to the Arrhenius equation, and a mathematical model was
proposed to develop an integrated reaction–separation process
using the experimental data obtained. The reaction conversion of the
fixed-bed membrane reactor at steady state achieved 98.7% at isothermal
conditions, increasing by 66% the conversion obtained in a fixed-bed
reactor (at the same operating conditions).
A novel process design based on the simulated moving bed technology for the synthesis of butyl acrylate (BAc) was investigated in order to get a more competitive industrial process. For that, a fixed-bed reactor was coupled with a simulated moving bed reactor. Reactive separation regions were determined for different conditions of process configurations and feed compositions allowing the optimal operating parameters to be found. Furthermore, the process integration was accomplished and the desorbent (n-butanol) recovery was also investigated ensuring the minimal BAc purity required (99.5% w/w). The viability and competitiveness of this process were evaluated after an economic analysis which showed that it required similar production costs and energy consumption as well for the highest production capacity when compared with other state-of-the-art processes for the BAc synthesis, presented so far.
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