Novel intensified process for di-isopropyl ether production from isopropanol etherification using reactive distillation technology

The preparation of di-isopropyl ether (DIPE), as an important chemical solvent, by isopropanol (IPA) etherification is limited by chemical equilibrium and azeotropic formation in its production processes. A novel sustainable etherification process based on reactive distillation (RD) coupled with extractive distillation is proposed. The reaction of IPA etherification was carried out by cation exchange resin NKC-9 in a 250 mL autoclave and fitted by a pseudo-homogeneous model. According to the reaction kinetic, the IPA etherification RD model was established. To confirm the viability of RD and the accuracy of the model, pilot-scale RD experiments for generating DIPE were investigated. Based on the established model matching the pilot scale experiments, the operating conditions of the etherification RD column were optimized by sensitivity analysis. The simulation results show that the conversion of IPA in the RD column can be increased from 18.2 % to 77.9 % compared with autoclave and the yield of DIPE in the whole process flowsheet can reach 99.9 %, which demonstrates that combining reactive distillation with extractive distillation technology is a feasible and advantageous solution for DIPE production.

Automated summary

This study proposes a novel sustainable etherification process for producing di-isopropyl ether (DIPE) by combining reactive distillation (RD) and extractive distillation, which overcomes the limitations of chemical equilibrium and azeotropic formation in traditional production processes. The results show that the conversion of isopropanol (IPA) can be increased from 18.2% to 77.9% in the RD column compared to the conventional autoclave reaction, and the overall yield of DIPE can reach 99.9%.