Recovery of trifluoroacetic acid from dilute aqueous solutions by reactive distillation

It is difficult to recover trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) from its dilute aqueous solutions by conventional techniques. This work investigates the feasibility of using reactive distillation to recover TFA through esterification with 2-propanol. A kinetic model is proposed based on batch reactor data. Experiments performed using reactive distillation in batch and continuous modes, show significant recovery. Independent column simulations, based on kinetics and vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE) developed in this work, agree well with our experimental results. The validated model is further used to obtain suitable design and operating parameters to give nearly complete recovery. A complete process recovery process sheet is suggested based on the results obtained.