Vinyl acrylate is one of the byproducts in the ethylene vapor phase method for the production of vinyl acetate (VAc), which not only has a toxic effect on the catalyst but also affects the purity of the product. Currently, phase equilibrium data for vinyl acrylate with water are missing, making the destination of vinyl acrylate in the distillation process uncertain. This has led to a lack of effective removal means, which restricts the optimization of the ethylene vapor phase method. This paper uses a method combining quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics simulation (MD) to investigate the existential form of the water molecule. And based on the ab initio calculation of the first principle, the force field parameters of the special water molecular structure are calculated, and the TIP4P-P force field that can describe the special water structure is established. Using the Gibbs Ensemble Monte Carlo (GEMC) method, the reliability of the improved water molecule force field for modeling the phase equilibrium of a binary system is first verified. Further, vapor–liquid phase equilibrium data for the vinyl acrylate-water binary system at 110 kPa and 150 kPa are calculated and the corresponding x-y and T-x-y phase diagrams are plotted. After performing the thermodynamic consistency test, the phase equilibrium data are fitted to obtain the binary interaction parameters of vinyl acrylate with water. The fitted parameters are applied to the process simulation of the VAc refining process to optimize the conditions and obtain an effective separation scheme for vinyl acrylate. The concentration distribution of vinyl acrylate in the distillation column is investigated, thus clarifying the destination of vinyl acrylate in the distillation process and facilitating the optimization of the ethylene vapor phase method.
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