A novel reactive distillation (RD) process for phenol production with high energy efficiency was developed, in which concentrating cumene hydroperoxide (CHP) was integrated with its decomposition in the RD column using a cation exchange resin as the catalyst. Results from the kinetic experiments showed that the dry resin (AMBERLYST 35DRY) is superior to the wet one (AMBERLYST 35WET) because of the negative influence of the high water content in the latter. Meanwhile, the intrinsic kinetics of CHP decomposition catalyzed by the dry resin was obtained by regression analysis with consideration of diffusion resistances of the catalyst. A lab-scale RD column was designed by some calculations with the obtained kinetics, and the corresponding experiments were carried out to study the technical feasibility and the performance in terms of energy efficiency. Besides the high conversion and selectivity of the new RD process, results also showed obvious significance of utilizing the decomposition heat for the distillation separation.
The composition profiles of the liquid streams across side reactors and distillation column are respectively shown in Figure S1 and Figure S2. They are from the optimal cases with one side reactor and with two side reactor. The water profile is not presented in Figure S1 because the mole fraction of water always keeps at about 0.8714.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.