Pervaporation‐Assisted Esterification of Caproic Acid with Isobutanol in Conventional, In Situ, and Ex Situ Reactors

Abstract

The factors that affect the pervaporation-assisted esterification of caproic acid and isobutanol have been investigated in a batch reactor and compared with two different pervaporation reactors, in situ and ex situ reactors, with different configurations. The operating process parameters of the pervaporation modules can be adjusted to optimize the performance, which improves the conversion of reactants and reduces the operating costs. The performances of the reactors have been extensively studied and the membrane selectivity has been investigated in terms of the flux of individual reaction species. The mass transfer limitation of both pervaporation reactors was studied and suitably eliminated. In addition, the performance of the pervaporation reactors was investigated by evaluating the ratio of water removal rate to the water production rate.

Pervaporation Reactor for Enhanced Esterification of Lactic Acid and Isobutyl Alcohol

“…Moreover, the performance of an PVR was also evaluated. Additionally, in a previous work , no mass transfer limitation was observed beyond the feed flow rate of 300 mL min −1 for the ex situ PVR study. Thus, in the present work, all ex situ PVR experiments were performed beyond the mentioned feed flow rate .…”

“…In combination with a chemical reactor, pervaporation is employed to remove one of the products formed during the reaction to shift the reaction equilibrium towards the forward side and, thereby, increasing the product yield. Several reports are available in the literature illustrating the application of pervaporation for the equilibrium shifting and process intensification of esterification reactions .…”

Functionalized Polyethylene Glycol as a Catalyst for Esterification of Salicylic Acid

“…An important issue about the esterification reaction is that an acid-based catalyst should be used to shift the equilibrium in the forward direction. However homogeneous catalysts were found to cause corrosion problems in addition to an enormous amounts of toxic effluents [3][4][5]; and because the recovery of homogeneous catalysts was found to be expensive, heterogeneous catalysts were found to be a suitable alternative [6].…”

Response Surface Methodology and Artificial Neural Networks for Optimization of Catalytic Esterification of Lactic Acid

“…Esterification of carboxylic acid and alcohol generates high-value products which find wide applications in the areas of perfumeries, flavors, fragrances, cosmetics, and surface-active agents. Typically, esterification is a liquid-phase reaction in which the conversion of reactants is limited by thermodynamic and chemical equilibrium [1,2]. In the absence of a catalyst, the esterification reactions are very slow to proceed and thus a catalyst is generally needed to accelerate the reaction.…”