Hybrid Process of Reactive Distillation and Pervaporation for the Production of Tert-amyl Ethyl Ether

In this study, a reactive distillation column in which chemical reaction and separation occur simultaneously is applied for the synthesis of tert-amyl ethyl ether (TAEE) from ethanol (EtOH) and tert-amyl alcohol (TAA). Pervaporation, an efficient membrane separation technique, is integrated with the reactive distillation for enhancing the efficiency of TAEE production. A user-defined Fortran subroutine of a pervaporation unit is developed, allowing the design and simulation of the hybrid process of reactive distillation and pervaporation in Aspen Plus simulator. The performance of such a hybrid process is analyzed and the results indicate that the integration of the reactive distillation witfi the pervaporation increases the conversion of TAA and the purity of TAEE product, compared with the conventional reactive distillation.