Reaction kinetics studies on catalytic dehydration of 1,4-butanediol using cation exchange resin Original Research Article

In the present work, we report kinetics of dehydration of 1,4-butanediol to tetrahydrofuran (THF) using a strong acid cation exchange resin as catalyst. Effects of various parameters such as temperature, catalyst concentration, substrate concentration, initial water concentration, speed of agitation and also effect of solvent have been investigated in detail. The initial rate varies linearly with reaction temperature. Also, we observed a strong dependence of rate on catalyst loading; this also followed a linear relationship. The rate data showed exponential dependence on initial substrate concentration. Water was found to inhibit the reaction due to the strong adsorption of water on active acid sites of resin. A mechanism has been proposed to explain the reaction behaviour. Contributions of film diffusion and intraparticle diffusion were found to be negligible in the range of parameters studied in this work. Reactor performance under integral conditions was predicted successfully using the proposed rate model.