Ethylene Glycol Recovery from 2-Ethyl-1,3-dioxolane Hydrolysis via Reactive Distillation: Pilot-Scale Experiments and Process Analysis

Abstract

EG is an important industrial raw material and the hydrolysis of 2-ethyl-1,3-dioxolane(2ED) to re-obtain EG is a very important step to recovery EG from EG and 1, 2-BDO azeotropic mixture via reversible reaction-assisted intensification process. The applicability of reactive distillation for 2ED hydrolysis in the presence of KRD-002 ion-exchange is studied by experiments and simulations. The reaction kinetics were investigated, and the kinetic parameters were derived. Thermodynamic aspects of the reaction system were discussed, and NRTL model was built. Pilot-plant reactive distillation experiments were performed by using the structured catalytic packing unit (SCPI) with several operating conditions variation (RR (reflux ratio), FMR (feed mole ratio) and feed-in style). The experimental results are in good agreement with the simulation results, which prove that the equilibrium stage model can describe the hydrolysis experiments quantitatively. The simulation was subsequently used to determine the influenc...