Avaliação termodinâmica e econômica do processo de produção de acetato de butila via destilação reativa.

Abstract

This work deals with a study on the production of butyl acetate through the liquid phase reaction between methyl acetate and butanol. This reversible reaction generates methanol as a byproduct and forms two azeotropes, which presents challenges in the process. To overcome these problems and reduce process units, two different configurations are investigated: one with three distillation columns and another with only two, both of which have a reactive distillation column. Although these distillation systems are efficient in terms of their purpose, they consume a significant amount of energy in the plants where they are used. Therefore, this study aims to thermodynamically and economically evaluate these processes, analyzing each column individually and the process as a whole. Concepts based on the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics are employed in the evaluation. Aspen PlusTM software simulates processes at a steady state, and their thermodynamic efficiency is evaluated based on availability. At the same time, the economic analysis considers total annual cost (TAC) and energy performance using specific energy consumption (SEC ). The results indicate that reactive distillation columns have lower thermodynamic efficiency and more lost work than conventional columns. The two flowcharts explored show close thermodynamic efficiency. In economic terms, the second configuration is more attractive, although there is a slight variation in the TAC value. The influence of the number of reactive stages is studied to investigate the factors that influence the thermodynamic efficiency in the reactive distillation process. The results show that the variation in the reactive zone has little impact on thermodynamic efficiency, mainly affecting the amount of lost work. Furthermore, the results highlight the dependence of this property on the amount of heat supplied to the reboiler.