Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
biotechnologicallly acquired pharmacological recep- Giddings JC (1991) UniTed Separation Science. New York:
tor proteins to generate drug}receptor interaction Wiley.
data and by applying QSRR analysis, the preselection Jinno K (ed.) (1997) Chromatographic Separations Based
of drug candidates can be facilitated and experiments on Molecular Recognition. New York: Wiley-VCH.
on animals reduced. Jurs PC (1996) Computer Software Applications in Chem-
istry, 2nd edn. New York: Wiley.
Kaliszan R (1987) Quantitative Structure}Chro-
See also: II/Chromatography: Liquid: Mechanisms:
matographic Retention Relationships. New York: Wiley.
Reversed Phases.
Kaliszan R (1997) Structure and Retention in Chro-
matography. A Chemometric Approach. Amsterdam:
Further Reading Harwood Academic Publishers.
Kier LB and Hall LH (1986) Molecular Connectivity in
Carr PW, Martire DE and Snyder LR (eds) (1993) The Structure}Activity Analysis. Letchworth: Research
retention process in reversed-phase liquid chromatogra- Study Press.
phy. Special Volume of Journal of Chromatography Plis\ ka V, Testa B and van de Waterbend H (eds) (1996)
A 656: 1}618. Lipophilicity in Drug Action and Toxicology. Wein-
ForgaH cs E and CserhaH ti T (1997) Molecular Bases of heim: VCH.
Chromatographic Separations. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Smith RM (1995) Retention and Selectivity in Liquid
Press. Chromatography. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
REACTIVE DISTILLATION
S. M. Mahajani, Monash University, Clayton, developed by CDTech, Sulzer, Koch Engineering and
Victoria, Australia BASF. An alternative approach is to prepare a cata-
S. P. Chopade, Michigan State University, East Lans- lyst in the form of conventional column packing and
ing, MI, USA pack it directly into the reactive distillation column.
Copyright ^ 2000 Academic Press Recognizing the potential of reactive distillation
for a particular process is a difRcult task, as not all the
reactions can be conducted effectively in this way.
Introduction Once its potential has been identiRed, the next step is
Reactive distillation is a combination of separation to design the reactive distillation column for the re-
and reaction in a single process. Commercial reactive quired task. The simultaneous existence of multiple
distillation processes for the manufacture of methyl processes such as mixing, mass transfer and reaction
t-butyl ether (MTBE) and methyl acetate were suc- are involved, and the design method requires thor-
cessfully commissioned in 1981 and 1983, respective- ough knowledge of both chemical and physical equi-
ly. These processes have a distinct edge over their libria as well as the reaction kinetics. Graphical
conventional predecessors. The reactive distillation representations of liquid phase compositions, called
process is particularly advantageous in the case of residue curve maps or distillation maps, are com-
reversible reactions where the conversion is limited by monly used to analyse the reactive distillation pro-
thermodynamic equilibrium. Some of the important cess. Though some efforts have been made to study
beneRts of reactive distillation are: reduced capital the underlying theory of the design method, the work
cost; employment of low mole ratios of reactants; is still at its preliminary stage. Another approach to
energy saving owing to utilization of the heat of understanding the behaviour of this process is to
reaction; and automatic temperature control and perform computer simulations and predict the perfor-
elimination of hot spots. The commercial process of mance of a column of known conRguration.
MTBE manufacture has shown that heterogeneous In this article the important aspects of commercial
catalysts such as ion exchange resins can be advantage- reactive distillation processes of MTBE and methyl
ously used in reactive distillation columns. Innovative acetate manufacture are described in detail. Recent
techniques of conRning the small size resin particles trends in the experimental and theoretical investiga-
(0.3}2 mm) in the column, allowing efRcient tions in this area are also outlined. The potential
solid}liquid contact and high void fraction, have been importance of reactive distillation in some industrial
4076 III / REACTIVE DISTILLATION
processes such as hydrolysis of methyl acetate and trimethyl-2-pentene. The other side reactions, which
recovery of chemicals from aqueous streams is dis- are of less importance, are formation of t-butanol by
cussed. reaction of isobutylene with water present as a feed
impurity, the formation of traces of dimethyl ether by
methanol condensation, and the double bond isomer-
MTBE Production ization of 1-butene. Amberlyst 15威, a macroporous
The area of particular interest where reactive distilla- cation exchange resin, is widely used as a catalyst for
tion can be used is the production of fuel ethers such this reaction. Numerous investigations on the kinetics
as MTBE. Gasoline reformulation using these ethers of this reaction system have been reported in the
as environmentally benign octane boosters has been literature. A model based on systematic studies of
driven by various Clean Air Acts, which have boosted reaction kinetics (eqn [1]) and equilibrium of this
MTBE production to a new level. By 2001 the pro- system incorporating the activities of the compounds
duction of MTBE is expected to be 25;106 tonnes has been developed and is used by many investigators
per annum worldwide. t-Amyl methyl ether (TAME) for column simulation studies.
and ethyl t-butyl ether (ETBE) are also emerging as
promising fuel additives. In addition to its property as aIB 1 aMTBE
an antiknock agent to enhance the octane number of r"mcat qacidkf ! [1]
aMeOH Keq a2MeOH
the fuel, MTBE improves the water tolerance limit
of the fuel and has a higher caloriRc value than that of
In eqn [1], mcat is the catalyst loading, qacid is the ion
other additives such as methanol.
exchange capacity and ai is the activity coefRcient of
Another important aspect of carrying out the
the corresponding component (IB, isobutylene,
etheriRcation to near complete conversion is its efR-
MeOH, methanol). The forward reaction rate con-
cient use in separating the iso-oleRns from the reRnery
stant kf and the equilibrium constant Keq have been
stream containing both normal and secondary bu-
Rtted experimentally. As a result of the high polarity
tenes (C4 or C5), which are otherwise very difRcult to
of methanol, the reaction mixture is highly nonideal
isolate. A reactive distillation column can handle the
and involves formation of two binary azeotropes and
mixed oleRns quite effectively and exploits the pres-
one ternary reactive azeotrope. The activities of the
ence of inert butenes to improve performance. This
components can sometimes be up to 20 times their
separation is necessary because n-butenes are re-
mole fractions.
quired in the pure form for homopolymerization and
as a feed for the oxidative production of butadiene. Commercial Process
Reaction Details Conventional processes for the manufacture of
MTBE (see Figure 1) use a catalytic reactor with
MTBE is a product of the liquid-phase reaction of
a slight excess of methanol (methanol/isobuty-
isobutylene and methanol, catalysed by a strong
lene"1.05}2). The products correspond to the
acidic macroreticular ion exchange resin. The
near-equilibrium conversion of about 90}95%. The
reaction is highly selective, so that methanol reacts
reaction mixture is separated using distillation, but
only with isobutylene in the presence of other
suffers from complications resulting from the forma-
C4 oleRns [I].
tion of binary azeotropes methanol}MTBE and iso-
butylene}methanol. The unreacted isobutylene is also
CH3OH #(CH3)2C"CH2 0 (CH3)3COCH3 [I] difRcult to separate from other volatile C4 products.
methanol isobutylene MTBE With the reactive distillation process, almost com-
plete conversion of isobutylene is obtained, thereby
H0298"!37.7 kJ mol\1 eliminating the separation and recycle problems.
Figure 2 provides a schematic representation of this
The favourable temperature and pressure ranges for process. A Rxed-bed pre-reactor is used to achieve
the reaction to occur are 323}373 K and 5}15 atm, near-equilibrium conversion. The product stream
respectively. The useful side reactions are the dimeriz- equivalent to the equilibrium conversion is fed to the
ation and oligomerization of isobutylene and bu- reactive distillation column, wherein, the residual
tadiene as well as the formation of codimers. Since, amount of isobutylene is reacted with methanol. The
until recently, only butadiene-extracted C4 reRnery reactive distillation column is composed of three sec-
streams were used for MTBE production, the only tions, the middle of which is a reactive zone packed
important by-product is diisobutylene, which consists with a solid catalyst. The top nonreactive rectifying
of the isomers 2,4,4-trimethyl-1-pentene and 2,4,4- section performs the separation of inert gases and
III / REACTIVE DISTILLATION 4077
Reaction Details
The reaction of methanol and acetic acid to
give methyl acetate (reaction [II]) has equilibrium
limitations.
Figure 3 Steady-state multiplicity behaviour of the MTBE
process. CH3OH #CH3COOH 0 CH3COOCH3 #H2O
methanol acetic acid methyl acetate water
decide whether a steady-state simulation would con- [II]
verge to a high conversion or a low conversion solu-
tion. In order to obtain a high conversion solution, H0298"!8.0 kJ mol\1
the lower section of the column must contain sufR-
cient MTBE to lift the entire amount of methanol to aMeOAcaH2O
Keq" "5.2 [2]
the reactive zone. Second, in the reactive zone, the aAcOHaMeOH
reaction mixture must be diluted to avoid a substan-
tial amount of MTBE decomposition. Initial esti- Equation [2] gives the equilibrium constant Keq as
mates of the composition at the lowest stage in the a function of the activity coefRcients aMeOAc (methyl
reactive zone are crucial in deciding the nature of the acetate), aH2O (water), and aAcOH (acetic acid).
steady state. This is expected to be due to the inherent Thus the reaction product will contain all four
coupling between ‘lift’ and ‘dilution’ effects that takes components even if one of the reactants is used in
place on this stage. excess. The reaction can be conducted in the temper-
Recent simulation studies on reactive distillation of ature range 310}393 K and at a pressure of 1 atm.
MTBE and TAME indicate two types of multiple The only important side reaction is the formation of
steady states. The Rrst, discussed above, arises out of dimethyl ether by the condensation of methanol. This
the interaction between reaction and vapour}liquid reaction is predominant at high temperatures.
equilibrium. The second multiple steady state is re- Though the reaction has been commercialized in
lated exclusively to the chemical reaction and arises a reactive distillation column, it is surprising that
because of the highly nonlinear concentration de- a systematic study on the kinetics of this reaction in
pendence of methanol activity at low operating pres- the presence of sulfuric acid as catalyst is not evident
sures. The only experimental evidence of multiple in the open literature. As in the MTBE system, the
steady states reported so far comes from work on rate expression in the form of activities is strongly
etheriRcation for TAME synthesis in a pilot plant of preferred because the high polarity of water and
Nestle Oy. It is therefore necessary to perform dy- methanol compared to that of methyl acetate leads to
namic simulations during the Rrst steps of the design strongly nonideal solution behaviour. Because of the
process in order to avoid dynamic surprises. commercial success of reactive distillation and
Another interesting Rnding of MTBE simulation the proven potential of the ion exchange resins, some
studies is the oscillatory behaviour of the reactive efforts have been made to propose a rate expression
distillation column. Sustained oscillations of boiling for an ion exchange resin-catalysed reaction. The
temperature and reSux have been reported in experi- expression for the rate, r, based on kinetic data gener-
mental studies on reactive distillation. It has been ated over a range of molar feed ratios more typical of
proved that the nonreactive and nonideal interactions reactive distillation conditions, is given by:
k(aHOAcaMeOH(!aMeOAcaH2O/Keq))
r" [3]
(1#KHOAcaHOAc#KMeOHaMeOH#KMeOAcaMeOAc#KH2OaH2O)
between methanol and isobutylene are responsible for where k is the rate constant, Keq is the equilibrium
these effects. constant and the Kis are the adsorption coefRcients
III / REACTIVE DISTILLATION 4079
acetate has to be separated and recycled. A schematic construction materials. Resin was moulded into
diagram of a typical conventional process is given in 7 mm;7 mm pellets using polyethylene powder. The
Figure 6. The reaction is carried out in a Rxed-bed distillation column was directly packed with these pel-
reactor and the product stream contains all four com- lets, which played the role of both catalyst and packing.
ponents. Four additional columns are required to A schematic diagram of the proposed reactive dis-
separate methanol and acetic acid streams and recycle tillation process is shown in Figure 7. Water is fed at
unconverted methyl acetate, along with methanol, to the top of the reactive section and methyl acetate is
the reactor. introduced at the bottom of the reactive section. The
The above has shown how reactive distillation sim- column is operated under total reSux of methyl acet-
pliRes the process in the case of the manufacture of ate}methanol azeotrope. The stripping section strips
methyl acetate. A similar concept can be applied to all the methyl acetate and the bottom product is
the hydrolysis reaction. A reactive distillation process essentially free of methyl acetate. The bottom product,
has been developed on a laboratory scale for the which now contains only methanol, water and acetic
hydrolysis of methyl acetate using an ion exchange acid, can be easily separated using two distillation
resin catalyst in a special form. Converting the pro- columns in series giving methanol and acetic acid as
cess from conventional to reactive distillation offers products. Thus, this process eliminates two main
the possibility of eliminating many complicated steps. pieces of equipment from the conventional process: (1)
The use of solid acid catalysts obviates the need for a water wash column for the separation of methanol
recovery of the spent acid and the use of exotic from methyl acetate, and (2) a methanol-enriching
distillation may Rnd a place in many other processes Kolah AK, Mahajani SM and Sharma MM (1996) Acetaliz-
such as hydrolysis of methyl acetate, recovery of ation of formaldehyde with methanol in batch and
carboxylic acid from their aqueous solutions, hy- continuous reactive distillation columns. Industrial
drodesulfurization and puriRcation of phenols. and Engineering Chemistry Research 35(10):
3707}3720.
Mohl KD, Kienle A, Gilles ED, Rapmund P, Sundmacher
See also: II/Distillation: Energy Management; Historical K and Hoffman U (1997) Nonlinear dynamics of react-
Development; Instrumentation and Control Systems; ive distillation processes for the production of fuel
Theory of Distillation. ethers. Computers and Chemical Engineering 21:
S989}S994.
Further Reading Neumann R and Sasson Y (1984) Recovery of acetic acid by
esteriRcation in a packed chemorectiRcation column.
Agreda VH, Partin LR and Heise WH (1990) High purity Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Process Design
methyl acetate via reactive distillation. Chemical Engin- and Development 23: 654}659.
eering Progress 86(2): 40}46. Nijhuis SA, Kerkhof FPJM and Mak ANS (1993) Multiple
Ancillotti F, Pescarollo E, Szatmari E and Lazar L (1987) steady states during reactive distillation of methyl tert-
MTBE from butadiene-rich C4s. Hydrocarbon Process- butyl ether. Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Re-
ing 66: 50}53. search 32: 2767}2774.
Bravo JL, Pyhalahti A and Jarvelin H (1993) Investigations Nocca JL, Leonard J, Gaillard JF and Amigues P (1989)
in a catalytic distillation pilot plant: vapour/liquid Process for manufacturing a tertiary alkyl ether by react-
equilibrium, kinetics, and mass transfer issues. ive distillation. US Patent 4 847 431.
Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research 32: RehRnger A and Hoffman U (1990) Kinetics of methyl
2220}2225. tertiary butyl ether liquid phase synthesis catalysed by
Chopade SP and Sharma MM (1997) Reaction of ethanol ion exchange resin } I. Intrinsic rate expression in liquid
and formaldehyde: use of versatile cation exchange phase activities. Chemical Engineering Science 45(6):
resins as catalysts in batch reactors and reactive distilla- 1605}1617.
tion columns. Reactive and Functional Polymers 32(1): Scates MO, Parker SE, Lacy JB and Gibbs RK (1997)
53}65. Recovery of acetic acid from dilute aqueous streams
Chopade SP and Sharma MM (1997) Acetalization of ethy- formed during a carbonylation process. US Patent 5 599
lene glycol with formaldehyde using cation exchange 976.
resins as catalysts: batch versus reactive distillation. Re- Sharma MM (1995) Some novel aspects of cationic ex-
active and Functional Polymers 34(1): 37}45. change resins as catalysts. Reactive and Functional Poly-
DeGarmo JL, Parulekar VN and Pinjala V (1992) Consider mers 26: 3}23.
reactive distillation. Chemical Engineering Progress Smith LA (1980) Catalyst system for separating isobutene
88(3): 43}50. fron C4 streams. US Patent 4 215 011.
Fuchigami Y (1990) Hydrolysis of methyl acetate in distilla- Smith LA (1981) Catalytic distillation process. US Patent
tion column packed with reactive packing of ion ex- 4 307 254.
change resin. Journal of Chemical Engineering of Japan Song W, Venimadhavan G, Manning JM, Malone MF and
23: 354}359. Doherty MF (1998) Measurement of residue curve maps
Hauan S, Hertzberg T and Lein KM (1995) Why methyl and heterogeneous kinetics in methyl acetate system.
tert-butyl ether production by reactive distillation may Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research 37:
yield multiple soultions. Industrial and Engineering 1917}1928.
Chemistry Research 34: 987}991. Sundmacher K and Hoffmann U (1995) Oscillatory
Jacobs R and Krishna R (1993) Multiple solutions in react- vapour}liquid transport phenomena in a packed reactive
ive distillation for methyl tert-butyl ether synthesis. In- distillation column for fuel ether production. Chemical
dustrial and Engineering Chemistry Research 32: Engineering Journal and the Biochemical Engineering
1706}1709. Journal 57: 219}228.
RESINS AS BIOSORBENTS:
ION EXCHANGE
S. Belfer, The Institutes for Applied Research, Introduction
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheva,
Israel The term biosorbent is usually applied to solid poly-
meric media employed in the puriRcation, separation
Copyright ^ 2000 Academic Press or isolation of biotechnological products. To assure