Design issues of pervaporation membrane reactors for esterification

Abstract

Esterification reactions are typically limited by thermodynamic equilibrium, and face challenges with product purification. Commercially, they are carried out using either large excess of one of the reactants, or by removing through reactive distillation one of the products. The former is a relatively inefficient approach because it requires a large reactor volume. As a result reactive distillation, which favorably shifts equilibrium through the removal of one of the products, is becoming more common in plant-scale production. It is, however, an energy-demanding operation and is not recommended when dealing with temperature-sensitive chemicals or biocatalysts. The aforementioned difficulties have motivated efforts for the development of other coupled reactive/separation processes. Pervaporation membrane reactors (PVMR), in particular, are receiving increased attention as a potentially competitive alternative to reactive distillation. In this paper, we present a model that we have developed to describe PVMR behavior. The simulation results of the model have been validated with experimentally observed pervaporation membrane reactor conversions. The model is used to describe a number of alternative PVMR configurations and analyze the factors that affect and optimize their performance.