Sorption effect on kinetics of etherification of tert-amyl alcohol and ethanol

The kinetics of the etherification of tert-amyl alcohol with ethanol, catalysed by a strong ion-exchange resin, Amberlyst 15, has been studied in a batch reactor at temperatures between 323 and 353 K and at a pressure of 0.8 MPa. The kinetics was described by a coupled sorption-reaction model. Flory-Huggins (F-H) model was used to predict the solubility of reaction components in the resin phase at 278 K (non-reactive conditions). Both sorption interaction parameters of F-H model and kinetic constants were determined by non-linear least-squares method. Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) and power law (PL) kinetic models were compared with the experimental data. Although both the models were found to be equally successful, L-H model has shown a slightly better representation than PL model. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.