Abstract
Many industrial reactions take place under the influence of acid catalysts in a homogeneous liquid phase, but very little information is available on the modelling of this catalysis from a chemical engineering point of view. Most physico-chemical discussions have led to complex models with a considerable number of unknown parameters. In a previous work, a power law for the influence of the Hammett acidity function on the chloromethylation of toluene in a complex medium with acetic acid, hydrochloric acid and zinc chloride was reported. This work describes the modelling of the acid catalytic activity as a function of the mixture composition. Taking into account that third order polynomial correlations have been used for the excess of acidity in hydrochloric acid-water mixtures, similar correlations have been obtained for hydrochloric acid-acetic acid-zinc chloride-water mixtures as a function of hydrochloric acid concentration. Parameters of the correlation are given depending on the amounts of acetic acid and zinc chloride, which are usually constant for each reaction. Correlations for the excess of acidity in complex mixtures solve the usual problem of the composition influence on the kinetic constant, which has been found in many acid-catalyzed reactions, allowing a mathematical description for the quantitative influence of the different acids on the reaction rate.
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