Pilot-scale validation and novel design of reactive distillation with HY@SiC foam catalytic packing for cyclohexyl acetate production

For reactive distillation (RD) process limited by the separation efficiency of gas–liquid mass transfer, if the physical size of the alternating operation in reaction and separation can be further reduced, it would greatly promote the efficiency of the RD process. For this purpose, a structured HY@SiC catalytic packing was developed in which the gas–liquid mass transfer separation process and the catalytic reaction occurred simultaneously on its surface. The HY@SiC catalytic packing was used in a pilot-scale column for experimental study on production of cyclohexyl acetate (CA) by RD to verify the performance of the catalytic packing for the first time. Furthermore, a RD model based on the HY@SiC catalytic packing was established based on the reaction kinetics of HY zeolite catalyst obtained in this work. Finally, a novel RD process with double recycle stream for CA production was proposed, which will be optimized design with TAC minimize as the optimization objective based on sequential iterative algorithm.