Activity evaluation of a catalytic distillation packing for MTBE production

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Abstract
The octane enhancer methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) can be produced very efficiently from methanol and isobutene in a reactive distillation column where the heterogeneous catalyst also acts as distillation packing. Some mathematical models have been published for the simulation of such a process but they focus on the physical transport processes between the vapour and liquid phases. However, the aim of this paper is to analyze the importance of the internal and external multicomponent mass and heat transfer phenomena on the catalyst under boiling conditions. Therefore, experiments were carried out in a reactive distillation column at different compositions of feed, column pressures and reflux ratios using a Raschig ring shaped acidic ion exchange resin as the catalyst. The temperature and composition of the liquid phase entering and leaving the catalytic column section were measured. These data were used to evaluate the effectiveness factor of the catalyst with a rigorous macrokinetic model. It is shown that the effectiveness factor varies significantly along the column length. Under certain operating conditions, decomposition of MTBE can occur accompanied by boiling processes inside the catalyst macropores.