Design and Control of Different Pressure Thermally Coupled Reactive Distillation for Methyl Acetate Hydrolysis

Abstract

Thermally coupled distillation is designed to reduce energy requirements and achieve environmental benefits in chemical engineering development processes. In this study an attractive different pressure thermally coupled reactive distillation (DPTCRD) process was proposed for the hydrolysis of methyl acetate, and the DPTCRD process was optimized to evaluate its economic feasibility. The calculation results clearly demonstrated that the total annual cost of this thermally coupled sequence can be saved by 7.49% and its exergy consumption is reduced by 40.07% compared with conventional reactive distillation. In addition, the controllability of this promising sequence was evaluated, and the dynamic results showed that the system with improved control structure can maintain stable operation and handle large feed upsets effectively.