Investigation on catalytic distillation for ethyl acetate production with different catalytic packing structures

The catalytic packing is the core component of the catalytic distillation, and how the catalyst exists in the packing has significant influence on the process. To investigate the effect of catalyst packings on the catalytic distillation process, the classical ethyl acetate reactive distillation system was utilized, and a supported catalytic packing (SCP) was prepared in comparison with the conventional tea-bag catalytic packing (TBP). Laboratory scale experiments showed that the ethyl acetate conversion of the SCP was superior to the TBP at a low catalyst loading. The effects of reaction kinetics, mass transfer performance and actual catalytic efficiency of the packings on this process were regarded as reasons and studied by combining the experiments and numerical simulation. Results suggested that the relatively immediate “in-situ separation” caused by the rapid reaction kinetics and better mass transfer performance of SCP may be a main reason for the difference of the conversion.