Gas–liquid and gas–liquid–solid reactors for the alkylation of benzene with propylene

This work deals with the mathematic models and improvement of four kinds of gas–liquid and gas–liquid–solid reactors for producing cumene by catalytic reaction, i.e., fixed-bed reactor, fixed-bed catalytic distillation (FCD) column, suspension catalytic distillation (SCD) column and ionic-liquid catalytic distillation (ICD) column. The fixed-bed reactor was improved by changing the particle diameter of catalyst and no extra equipment was needed. The FCD and SCD columns were, respectively, improved by carrying out alkylation and transalkylation simultaneously in a column, which also may hold for the ICD column, in which, however, the conductor-like screening model for real solvents (COSMO-RS) was used to take into account the influence of ionic liquid on vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE).