Microwave Reactive Distillation Process for Production of Ethyl Acetate

A novel intensification technology microwave reactive distillation (MRD) process was developed by coupling the microwave irradiation and reactive distillation (RD) process to break through the limitations of the RD process, such as low esterification reaction rate. The batch MRD process and RD process for acetic acid and ethanol esterification were compared by using a laboratory-scale RD packed column with strong acidic ion-exchange resin as catalyst. The effects of reflux ratio, feed flow rate, microwave power, and reboiler heating power were investigated. The results showed that, with the same total energy consumption, MRD needed less time than RD to obtain 70% overhead EtAc content. Compared with the RD process, the instantaneous improvement of ethyl acetate content achieved by MRD was up to 6.9% under same reflux ratio, and 6.7% under same acetic acid feed flow rate. The variation trend of experimental results matched that of the numerical simulation results.