Butyl acrylate production: A review on process intensification strategies

Butyl Acrylate is one of the most important acrylic monomers presenting great potential for several industrial applications mainly in surface coating field. Hence, the global butyl acrylate market has grown in the last years and, accordingly, the development of better alternatives to the conventional process, which involves a multistage procedure and homogeneous catalysis, is increasingly gaining the attention of the scientific community. This paper summarizes the state-of-the-art of butyl acrylate production and the main results achieved. Patented processes and process integration strategies studied so far are addressed as well as a brief review on the key economic indicators of each process scaled up at industrial scale suggested in the literature. Currently, process integration based strategies with focus on reactive distillation technology and chromatographic reactors (process intensification methods) have been pointed out as alternative routes for the continuous production of butyl acrylate. In summary, from the industrial point of view, Simulated Moving Bed Reactors based processes seem to be one of the most attractive due to its key economic indicators, presenting an economic potential of 30,500 €/y, which is approximately three times higher than the remaining studied processes.