Transesterification of Methyl Acetate Using a Flow-Type Membrane Reactor with a Zeolite Membrane

Continuous-flow reactors used for manufacturing pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals have been investigated because of their advantages of high space–time yield, heat efficiency, mixing efficiency, and selectivity. In this study, we developed a flow-type membrane reactor to perform transesterification, one of the important reactions in synthesizing pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals. We observed that anion exchange ionomer (AEI) membrane exhibited high methanol selectivity because of the molecular sieving effect from the reaction system of transesterification of methyl acetate and i-butyl alcohol. Because the equilibrium level of conversion is shifted by the selective removal of methanol, the yield of i-butyl acetate using the flow membrane reactor with the AEI membrane reached 66.2%, which exceeded the 42.9% level of the equilibrium conversion without membrane. The productivity of ester improved by 54% using the proposed membrane reactor. The flow-type membrane reactor exhibited stable performance for at least 9 h. The effect of residence time in a flow reactor on the yield of ester was also studied. A substantial amount of methanol is removed through the membrane by extending the residence time. A high methanol removal fraction leads to a substantial shift in the equilibrium level, thereby improving the product yield.