Simulation of"Backpack"reactive distillation process for the production of cyclohexyl acetate

A novel reactive distillation process integrating a distillation column with side reactors(DCSR) was proposed for the production of cyclohexyl acetate through the additive esterification of cyclohexene and acetic acid. Aimed at the reduction of the total annual cost(TAC), when the feeding rates of both cyclohexene and acetic acid were 10 kmol/h and the mass fraction of cyclohexyl acetate in the column bottom was stipulated as 99.5%(w), the effects of operating conditions and the integration structure on the esterification were investigated by means of the Aspen Plus process simulation software. The results indicated that, under the optimal DCSR process conditions of reboiler duty 0.51 MW, the stripping section plates number is 3, number of side reactors 2 and catalyst loading 2 300 kg with a distribution coefficient of 0.44/0.56, TAC was 2.82×10⁶ Yuan/a, lower than that of the traditional reaction-separation process. Comparison to the traditional reaction-separation process, the reboiler duty, catalyst loading and TAC of the DCSR process decreased by 8.9%, 42.5% and 18.9%, respectively.