Process simulation for the recovery of lactic acid using thermally coupled distillation columns to mitigate the remixing effect

Innovative Reactive Distillation Process for the Sustainable Purification of Lactic Acid

“…The capabilities of using such technology were preliminarily elucidated by Kim et al Moreover, this case study fulfills all the preliminary requirements to claim the complete feasibility of the RD technology to purify lactic acid. For example, according to Shah et al, before any synthesis or design task, it is necessary to determine the feasibility of any reactive distillation scheme.…”

“…The principle of selecting the operating pressure of any distillation column is one of the most important design decisions. In the particular case of the conventional sequence, the pressure has a great impact, since, as mentioned above, a determining factor is the temperature in the column dome, because if the lactic acid is subjected to temperatures above 80 °C, there is a high probability that it will oligomerize . The above-mentioned case is avoided by achieving vacuum pressures, which can be seen in Table (lactic acid, water, and succinic acid have boiling points of 82 °C, 50 °C, and close to 110 °C, respectively).…”

“…For chemical systems with nonidealities and strong interactions between acids in the vapor phase, the UNIQUAC-HOC and NRTL-HOC property models are sufficient. The UNIQUAC-HOC model was used to avoid introducing additional factors that might affect the comparison with previously published benchmark studies. , For a representative broth obtained from a bioprocess producing lactic acid, the feeding conditions to the reactive distillation are displayed in Table . It is important to mention that this is a simplified case study to test the feasibility of these structures.…”

“…The technological benefits of reactive distillation can be summarized as follows: (a) increased conversion; (b) increased selectivity; (c) reduced energy consumption; (d) overcoming of azeotropes; (e) simplified separation of close-boiling components, and (f) capital savings. Recently, intensified process with reactive membranes or reactive distillation has been proposed to alleviate these limitations . The recovery of nonvolatile lactic acid from the fermentation broth is difficult due to the similarity of the boiling points.…”

“…11 The technological benefits of reactive distillation can be summarized as follows: Recently, intensified process with reactive membranes 12 or reactive distillation has been proposed to alleviate these limitations. 13 The recovery of nonvolatile lactic acid from the fermentation broth is difficult due to the similarity of the boiling points. The purification of lactic acid using reactive distillation can be described as follows: the lactic acid is reacted with methanol, and methyl lactate is produced.…”