Simulation of methyl acetate synthesis in distillation column with external side reactors

The strong acidic ion exchange resin is used as catalyst to produce high purity methyl acetate from acetic acid and methanol by reactive distillation process,which can avoid the disadvantages when sulfuric acid is taken as catalyst.But heterogeneous reactive distillation is still limited for high purity methyl acetate synthesized by acetic acid esterification,mainly because the high liquid holdup in the reactive section for maximizing reactive retain time does not match the requirement of high interfacial area for good separation.This mismatch problem can be overcome by considering an alternative process flowsheet that features a distillation column with external side reactors.A distillation column with side reactors model was established in Aspen Plus,then the influence of device parameters and operation conditions such as numbers of side reactors,feeding location,reflux ratio and ratio of alcohol to acid on the reactive distillation was discussed.The results show that the mass fraction of methyl acetate achieves 99.1% under the optimal operation conditions in a column with 7 side reactors and 4 trays between two rectors.