Residue curves map analysis for tert-amyl methyl ether synthesis by reactive distillation in kinetically controlled conditions with energy-saving evaluation

Distillation is a largely used separation operation, but at the same time it is intensively energy consuming. Distillation columns need huge amount of energy due to evaporation steps involved; more than half of the process heat distributed to plant operations ends up in the reboilers of distillation columns. ∞/∞ analysis is a framework that allows studying distillation systems, checking the feasibility, detecting multiple steady states and getting the influence of the distillate flow rate and recycle streams on purities in early stage of process design. Also, ∞/∞ analysis is useful to evaluate new alternatives for existing processes and to propose energy-efficient alternatives by process integration. Process intensification is an issue of constant interest, providing strategies to develop more effective and cheaper technologies with lower environmental impact. The originality of this paper lies in the applicability of this framework to kinetically controlled reactive distillation including hybrid systems. TAME synthesis is used as an illustrative example. Energy savings obtained by using reactive distillation are evaluated comparing with the traditional system consisting of reactor and distillation columns. The solution proposed, subsequent to the validation by rigorous simulation, offers a 20% decrease in the number of stages and a reboiler energy saving of 10%.