Recovery of dilute acetic acid through esterification in a reactive distillation column

With ever-growing environmental concerns, petrochemical and fine chemical industries face an omnipresent issue in recovering acetic acid from its aqueous solutions. The recovery of acetic acid through the esterification process is a very viable option. However, esterification reactions are typically restricted by equilibrium limitations, and face challenges with product purification. Reactive distillation is an emerging technology that has an extremely attractive potential as a process alternative for carrying out equilibrium limited chemical reactions. Although the reactive distillation process has been successfully commercialised for the manufacture of hIgh commodity chemicals e.g. methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) and methyl acetate, its potential as a separation tool for the recovery of acetIc acid using iso-amyl alcohol has not been exploited.[continues ...]