Understanding the Quantitative Matching Principle of Reaction and Distillation for the Reactive Distillation Process of Cyclohexyl Acetate Synthesis

The matching problem of reaction and separation in reactivedistillation(RD) is an urgent problem, and the main reason for little relevantresearch is that there is no suitable RD for experiments. To understandthe matching principle, this work designed KRD001#SCPI and HY@SiCcatalytic packings, which tend to different coupling ratios of reactionand separation. The pilot-scale RD experiments and corresponding simulationof cyclohexyl acetate production were studied to verify matching couplingof different reaction RD requirements. Upon verification of this,conventional RD processes were considered from economic, environmental,and energy perspectives, and a new matching form of RD was furtherproposed based on uneven product distribution. For a ternary reactionsystem where product was heavy, product concentration moved downward,catalytic packings with high reaction rates were needed at lower reactionsections to avoid a reverse reaction, and those with high separationefficiency are needed at the upper section to separate product andreactants better.