iso-Amyl Acetate Synthesis by Catalytic Distillation

Abstract

With ever-growing environmental concerns, petrochemical and fine chemical industries face an omnipresent issue in recovering dilute acetic acid from its aqueous solutions. Catalytic distillation holds an ascendancy over conventional physical separation methods such as distillation and extraction. Distillation is associated with the high costs involved in vaporising the more volatile water that exists in high proportions and possesses a high latent heat of vaporisation. Extraction is limited in view of the distribution of the components in the reacting system. The implementation of catalytic distillation reduces capital and operating costs, and allows for a wider range of operating conditions. Catalytic distillation is receiving increasing attention and holds a huge potential for the recovery of acetic acid. Through the application of catalytic distillation via the reaction of acetic acid with iso-amyl alcohol, a useful ester in the form of iso-amyl acetate could be produced.In the present work towards further process development, the synthesis of iso-amyl acetate via reactive distillation is studied using Katamax® catalyst packing in the catalytic reactive section. The reactive distillation experiments were carried out at laboratory scale in a 50 mm diameter column with a catalytic packing section of 1 m and non-reactive packed enriching and stripping sections of about 1 m each. A cation exchange resin catalyst, Purolite® CT-175, was used. The experiments were conducted with the aim of achieving an optimum column configuration as well as process conditions for the synthesis of iso-amyl acetate in a reactive distillation column (RDC). Several variants of the RDC set-up e.g. total feed mole ratio, reflux ratio, location of feed points, reflux configuration and acid concentrations were explored for the recovery of dilute acetic acid and to achieve a high purity value added product, iso-amyl acetate.

Greener and Sustainable Method for Alkene Epoxidations by Polymer-Supported Mo(VI) Catalysts

“…Reactive distillation (RD) is one of the emerging technologies that has an extremely attractive potential as a process alternative for carrying out equilibrium limited liquid phase chemical reactions (Saha and Sharma, 1996;Saha et al 2005). It is a unit operation which combines simultaneous chemical reaction and multi-component distillation in the same vessel in a single step.…”

“…We are also developing a detailed knowledge of the repeated use of this catalyst to provide experimental parameters to aid in the design of a reactive-distillation column upon which we are already embarked. The design is based upon a previous successful reactive-distillation column (RDC) rig used for esterifications (Saha and Sharma, 1996;Saha et al 2005) but will require significant modification to be compatible with the quite different physico-chemical demands of alkene epoxidations. In this paper we will highlight some batch experimental studies for epoxidation of alkene catalyzed by polymer supported Mo(VI) complex.…”

Dynamic modeling of the isoamyl acetate reactive distillation process

“…RD has also been recommended for the esterifi cation of isoamyl acetate 4, 18-20 , which is widely used as an additive to fl avor processed food and beverages. In an experimental investigation, the conversion of acetic acid with RD was reported to reach 69.5% as compared with the 18.2% achieved by a conventional batch reactor 18 . Patil and Kulkarni 19 determined the esterifi cation reaction kinetics of acetic acid with isoamyl alcohol in a batch reactor.…”

Design and control of different pressure thermally coupled reactive distillation for synthesis of isoamyl acetate

“…Besides the basic reaction research, different processes were designed to synthesis i-AmAc. Saha et al [13] provided a CRD process for the synthesis of i-AmAc via the esterification of i-AmOH and HAc, and a cation exchange resin catalyst named Purolite CT-175 was used in the catalytic reactive section. Ali et al [14] compared the CRD process with the conventional reactor-separator process on synthesis of i-AmAc, which confirmed that the CRD process showed advantages on both energy consumption and capital cost.…”