THE PRODUCTION OF DIACETONE ALCOHOL WITH CATALYTIC DISTILLATION - PART II - A RATE-BASED CATALYTIC DISTILLATION MODEL FOR THE REACTION ZONE

The aldol condensation of acetone to diacetone alcohol (DAA) has been accomplished with catalytic distillation (CD). A steady-state, rate-ba sed model for the reaction zone of the CD column is developed and fitt ed to the experimental data which were presented in Part I of this pap er. This model is unique in that it considers external mass transfer b etween the liquid phase and the catalyst surface. The main purpose of this model is to predict production rates and product selectivities. T he formation of DAA proved to be an excellent system for the study of external mass transfer effects in catalytic distillation. The model fi ts the experimental data quite well, but could not be applied a priori due to the random nature of flow patterns in packed columns. However, it may be possible to predict the performance of larger diameter colu mns since liquid distributors improve the reproducibility of the now p attern. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.