Process intensification: New technologies (SMBR and PermSMBR) for the synthesis of acetals

• SMBR and PermSMBR technologies evaluation for acetals production.
• SMBR leads to high productivities, but also high solvent consumption.
• PermSMBR leads to better performance, but has higher capital and operational costs.

Acetals, as 1,1-diethoxyethane (DEE) and 1,1-dibutoxyethane (DBE), can be used as green oxygenates for diesel blending due to their capacity to reduce particulate matter emissions and to enhance the diesel cetane number. The use of multifunctional technologies, where reaction and separation occur in the same unit, provides the most feasible engineering solution for their synthesis, which involves equilibrium limited reactions. Motivated by that, two innovative technologies for the production of DEE and DBE acetals were explored: the Simulated Moving Bed Reactor and the recently developed Simulated Moving Bed Membrane Reactor – PermSMBR. In this work, the main results and characteristics of each process are presented and discussed.

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