A Novel Distillate Policy for Batch Reactive Distillation with Application to the Production of Butyl Acetate

TLDR

Batch distillation has long been central to chemical production, yet the benefits of manipulating operating policies remained unclear until the 1970s due to the mathematical difficulty of finding time‑optimal strategies, a challenge addressed elegantly by Mayur and Jackson. This study investigates a novel distillate policy for batch reactive distillation, specifically targeting butyl acetate production. Using Pontryagin's maximum principle, the authors derive an explicit reflux policy for equimolar reactions and apply it to a conventional column configuration in batch reactive distillation. For butyl acetate synthesis, the new policy achieves complete conversion and high‑purity products in a single operation, outperforming traditional approaches. Reference: Eng.

Abstract

Considering the longstanding importance of batch distillation in chemical production, it is surprising that the utility of manipulating operating policies was not understood until the 1970s. This is partly due to the mathematical difficulty of finding the time-optimal policy. Perhaps the most elegant and effective treatment of this problem is found in the work of Mayur and Jackson (Chem. Eng. J. 1971, 2, 150−163). They used Pontryagin's maximum principle to find the optimal reflux policy for the batch distillation of ideal multicomponent mixtures. In this paper, motivated by Mayur and Jackson's classic treatment, we examine a novel distillate policy and a conventional column configuration for batch distillation with chemical reaction. This distillate policy leads to a new explicit reflux policy for the special class of equimolar reactions. For the particular case of butyl acetate production, it is shown that this leads to complete conversion of ingredients and high-purity products, which are unattainable by the traditional approach, in a single operation.