Performance of packed bed reactive distillation column

Abstract

Lab-scale packed bed reactive distillation column was utilized to evaluate the performance of reactive distillation for the reaction between isopropyl alcohol and acetic acid. Two different packing materials and different bed heights were compared to obtain the optimum bed height and packing material for the chosen reaction. Glass Raschig rings and spherical shaped rubber were chosen as the packing materials. Experiments were conducted for the same batch time and desirable packing material and bed height was chosen according to the experiment results. It was indicated that the glass Raschig rings gave isopropyl acetate rich products.