NEW TOOLS FOR THE DESIGN OF KINETICALLY CONTROLLED REACTIVE DISTILLATION-COLUMNS FOR TERNARY MIXTURES

Reactive distillation is an emerging technology that has great potenti al as a process alternative for carrying out liquid phase chemical rea ctions. Systematic design methods for reactive distillation systems ha ve only recently begun to appear, and so far these have been restricte d to systems at chemical equlibrium. It is not always economical, howe ver, to operate reactive distillation columns close to reaction equili brium conditions. In this paper we present a design procedure for kine tically controlled reactive distillation columns for ternary mixtures, and demonstrate the concepts for reactions of the type 2C double left right arrow A + B. We show that the amount of liquid holdup per stage has a significant effect on the design, and that there is a sharp min imum in the total column holdup, at fixed product compositions, as the liquid holdup on each stage is varied.