Development of a flowsheet for sec-butyl acetate production based on a complex analysis of the reaction and distillation components

Abstract

The vapor–liquid and liquid–liquid phase equilibria in the reaction system of sec-butyl acetate production from n-butenes and acetic acid were simulated. The simulation made it possible to develop two variants of principal technological flowsheets of the process organization. The both variants are based on the principle of redistribution of the concentration fields between the separation regions: in the first case, due to the chemical reaction; in the second case, owing to the splitting phenomenon. The material balances of the schemes were calculated, and the static operating parameters were determined. The first variant of the flowsheet does not enable one to obtain sec-butyl acetate of the required quality and, therefore, heteroazeotropic distillation for the separation of sec-butyl acetate from acetic acid was proposed in the second variant. The use of water as a heteroazeotrope-forming agent in the separation block allows the quality of sec-butyl acetate satisfying the environment standard requirements (GOST) to achieve at technologically appropriate operating parameters.