Simulation of Ethyl Tert-Butyl Ether Production from Tert-Butyl Alcohol and Ethanol in Reactive Distillation

Suttichai Assabumrungrat (Center of Excellence in Catalysis and Catalytic Reaction Engineering Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Chulalongkorn University Bangkok 10330 THAILAND)
Varong Pavarajarn (Center of Excellence in Catalysis and Catalytic Reaction Engineering Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Chulalongkorn University Bangkok 10330 THAILAND)
Darin Wongwattanasate (Center of Excellence in Catalysis and Catalytic Reaction Engineering Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Chulalongkorn University Bangkok 10330 THAILAND)
Piyasan Praserthdam (Center of Excellence in Catalysis and Catalytic Reaction Engineering Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Chulalongkorn University Bangkok 10330 THAILAND)

ASEAN Journal of Chemical Engineering
Vol 5, No 1 (2005)

Reactive distillation was applied for the synthesis of ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE) from a liquid-phase reaction between tert-butyl alcohol (TBA) and ethanol (EtOH) catalyzed by commercial ~-zeolite catalyst with Si/AI ratio of 55. The major side reaction of this system was the dehydration of TBA to isobutene (lB). From the present researchers' previous work, it was found that B-zeolite was superior to commercial Amberlyst-15 catalyst in reaction selectivity. The kinetic parameters for the reactions, which were determined using a semibatch reactor operated at various temperatures, were used for simulation in Aspen Plus TN program. Various operating parameters, such as heat duty, molar ratio of Hz0: EtOH, and refluxratio, were investigatedfor their effectson reactive distillation performance. Keywords: ,B-zeolite,ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE) synthesis, and reactive distillation.