Application of reactive distillation for production of ethyl tertiary butyl ether from ethanol and tertiary butanol

Abstract

This thesis concerns with the synthesis of ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE) from the liquid phase reaction between ethanol (EtOH) and tert-butyl alcohol (TBA) by using synthesized beta zeolite with Si/Al ratio of 36 and commercial beta zeolite with Si/Al ratio of 13.5 and 55. It was found that all beta zeolites with different Si/Al ratio offer almost the same conversion and selectivity of ETBE. However, the beta zeolite with the Si/Al ratio of 55 was selected for the following studies, as it was available in commercial market and present in a ready-to-use form. Beta zeolite supported on monolith was used in the kinetic and reactive distillation studies,. The reaction was carried out in a semi-batch reactor in the temperature range of 343-363 K to obtain the parameters of the reaction rate constant and the water inhibition coefficient. In the reactive distillation study, the supported beta zeolite was placed in the middle of the column and stainless steelpacking material was used in the top and the bottom sections of the column. Results under the standard operating condition indicated that the conversion and the selectivity were 60.5 and 27.7%, respectively. In addition, various operating parameters such as condenser temperature, total molar feed flow rate, reflux ratio, heat duty and mole ratio of H2O:EtOH were simulated to find the effects on the reactive distillation performance by using Aspen Plus.