Selectivity engineering with single-feed hybrid reactive distillation configurations: Complex reaction schemes having nonideal kinetics with/without inerts

Abstract

The present contribution is first of its kind in the field of conceptual designs of reactive distillation (RD) configurations, focusing on the impact of nonideal kinetics in obtaining the feasible designs of desired selectivity for complex reaction schemes, both with and without inert components. Our earlier work on selectivity engineering with reactive distillation through a series of publications was restricted to complex reaction schemes with ideal kinetics only. In this work, we extend it for nonideal kinetics and explore the impact of nonideal kinetics on the choice of hybrid RD configuration (HRDC) needed to achieve the desired selectivity for intermediate products. It has been found that the choice of HRDC strongly depends on the number of components involved, including inert components in a given complex reaction scheme with nonideal kinetics. The developed methodology was successfully applied to four industrially important multireaction schemes that featured nonideal kinetics with/without inerts.