Conceptual design of water separation process in glycerol-based acrylic acid production

Abstract

This paper focuses on the conceptual design of a quenching system to separate the water produced in a glycerol-based acrylic acid production process. In the glycerol-based process, acrylic acid is produced through fermentation and dehydration, and a large amount of water is generated. Thus, an effective way to separate water from acrylic acid is essential. We investigate a process scheme for quenching systems that separates the water generated from these reactions. The liquid–liquid extraction process is applied to separate water for high purity acrylic acid production. The selection of the solvent in extraction process is important so we compared several representative solvents, then results is that toluene is the most suitable solvent. As a result, a conceptual design using toluene as a solvent was suggested, and the proposed process using a quenching system to separate the water in two steps was investigated. The sensitivity analysis and economic assessment of the proposed process resulted in a 46.0 wt% reduction in the total flowrate of the subsequent processes, and reductions in the capital and operating costs by 52.0% and 39.3%, respectively.