Author : Shivali Arora and Hemant Kumar

The production of ethyl acetate is gaining lot of attention because of the growing needs of the greener fuel in the world. Reactive distillation (RD) is a column in which reactor and separator work simultaneously. Ethyl acetate is an ester produced through the reversible reactions such as esterification and etherification in reactive distillation column. In the proposed work modeling of the reactive distillation column for the production of ethyl acetate is given. The model incorporates reaction kinetics and vapor liquid non idealities balanced through MESH (Material Balance, Equilibrium Relationships, Summation equation and energy balance). Present study discussed the current modeling techniques and its importance.

Keywords: Reactive distillation, Material Balance, Vapor-liquid equilibrium, Modeling, Feed composition