A partially heat integrated reactive distillation: Feasibility and analysis

Published studies have been focused mainly on the internal heat integration of nonreactive columns. In this contribution, a novel partially heat integrated reactive column configuration is proposed. The representative reactive column is originally a unit of the two-column sequence used for the production of high-purity ethyl acetate. The present study identifies the thermodynamic feasibility of the reactive process and explores an economically interesting partially heat integrated reactive distillation column (HIRDC). Sensitivity tests have been conducted to tune the design and operating variables. An economic comparison between the proposed two-column scheme consisting of HIRDC followed by a recovery column and its conventional counterpart is also performed. Due to the internal energy integration, better performance is achieved with more than 20% energy saving and a payback time of 3.58 years is obtained.