Modeling and Simulation of Temperature Profiles in a Reactive Distillation System for Esterification of Acetic Anhydride with Methanol

Abstract

This paper pertains to an experimental and theoretical study of simulation of temperature profiles in a one- stage adiabatic batch distillation/reactor for the production of methyl acetate and acetic acid from the esterification of acetic anhydride with methanol. Basically it deals with the development of a mathematical model for temperature predictions in the reactor. The reaction kinetics of the process was modeled using information obtained from experimental temperature –time data during the esterification processes. The simulation results were then compared with the experimental data.

The maximum deviation of the model –predicted temperature form the corresponding experimentally measured temperature was less than 4% which is quite within the acceptable deviation range of experimental results..

Keywords: Modeling, Simulation, Reactive distillation, Temperature, Esterification, Acetic anhydride, Methanol