STEADY-STATE MODELING OF N-BUTYL ACETATE TRANSESTERIFICATION PROCESS USING ASPEN PLUS: CONVENTIONAL VERSUS INTEGRATED

Abstract

This work has been carried out to compare the performances of conventional system and integrated one using the transesterification process between n-butanol and ethyl acetate for the production of n-butyl acetate and ethanol as the case study. The transesterification process was modeled using Aspen PLUS by choosing the reaction involved as an equilibrium type and using UNIQUAC model as the base property method. The reaction was allowed to take place in a liquid phase at the atmospheric pressure and a temperature of 75oC. The conventional system consisted of a mixer, a reactor and a distillation column while the integrated one comprised a mixer and a distillation column the middle of which was used as the reactor. The results obtained from the simulation have proven that the integrated system was better than the conventional one because the integrated system was able to give higher conversion and higher product purities. The optimization of the integrated system gave an optimum value of reflux ratio to be 3.1 and the maximum value of n-butyl acetate mole fraction that was obtained at the bottom segment to be 0.9990. Therefore, for the transesterification process that was used for the production of n-butyl acetate and ethanol, the integrated system has been proved to be more efficient than the conventional one