Reactive distillation - A viable solution for etherification of glycerol with tert-butyl alcohol

Two different alternatives for etherification of glycerol with tert-butyl alcohol (TBA) are developed and analyzed. The conventional reaction - separation - recycle system uses a plug-flow reactor to perform the reaction in liquid phase, in the presence of a heterogeneous catalyst (Amberlyst 15). The separation of the products from reactants is achieved by two distillation columns where pure glycerol ethers are obtained, and a section involving extractive distillation with 1,4-butanediol as solvent, which separates TBA from the TBA/water azeotrope. The second alternative employs a reactive distillation column, where TBA is fed as vapor below the reactive zone, while glycerol enters as liquid above the reactive zone. High purity water and glycerol ethers are obtained as distillate and bottoms, respectively. The controllability of reactive distillation setup is proved by dynamic simulation. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the CHISA 2012 - 20th International Congress of Chemical and Process Engineering and PRES 2012 - 15th Conference PRES (Prague, Czech Republic 8/25-29/2012).