Kinetics of esterification of acetic acid with n‐butanol over different homogeneous acid catalysts

Abstract The esterification reaction of n‐butanol and acetic acid has been performed in batch reactor in the presence of different homogeneous acid catalyst, namely sulfuric acid, nitric acid, and para toluene sulfonic acid (p‐TSA). The objective of present research work is to investigate kinetic behavior of esterification reaction over the temperature range of 60°C–80°C. The effect of reaction parameter such as catalyst loading varied from 1% to 5% v/v and acid to alcohol molar ratio of 1:1, 1:3, and 1:5 has been observed. A pseudo homogeneous kinetic model has been applied. Kinetic parameters such as equilibrium constant, reaction rate constant, enthalpy, activation energy, and entropy were calculated by the experimental data for different acid catalyst system. It was observed that sulfuric acid gives higher conversion 73% than p‐TSA 68.5% and nitric acid 66.25% at temperature of 80°C, 1:1 molar ratio and 3% catalyst concentration. The activation energy was estimated 36448.49, 23324.31 and 19060.156 J/mol K for three different catalyst sulfuric acid, nitric acid and p‐TSA respectively. The enthalpy and entropy of the esterification reaction of acetic acid with n‐butanol over three different catalysts has been calculated (Enthalpy: 25.788 KJ/mol, 12.256 KJ/mol, 28.320 KJ/mol, Entropy: 88.1 J/mol K, 45.298 J/mol K, 91.44 J/mol K) and found enthalpy is having positive value that shows reaction is endothermic.