Title

Abstract

The reaction of ethanol and Acetic acid is Reversible. The process of traditional method has four columns, but its energy consumption is high. Applied reactive distillation to preparation of ethyl acetate, reaction moves to the side of producing ethyl acetate as water moved out of the system, which decreases burden of next separation processes. That method has lower energy consumption. This paper adopts Aspen Plus simulating the process that acetic acid and ethanol produce ethyl acetate by reactive distillation. And acidic resin is used as the catalyst of this process. The system contains one reactive distillation column, one stripper and a decanter. It achieves goals that the purity of product is up to 99%. The energy consumption of the whole system is 10405.4 MJ per ton of product. While, the energy consumption of traditional process is 10405.4 MJ per ton of product. According to the data obtained from simulation results, in the design of process of annual out put of 30,000 tons ethyl acetate, equipment selection and automatic control design are finished.

Key words: ethyl acetate, reactive distillation, simulation, reaction distillation column,

stripper, decanter