Ethyl acetate production by Fischer esterification: use of excess of acetic acid and complete separation sequence

In this work, production of ethyl acetate (EtAc) using Fischer esterification between acetic acid (AcOH) and ethyl alcohol (EtOH) is presented. Batch kinetics was developed with EtOH as the limiting reactant to avoid the problems associated with unreacted ethanol in the final product. Regression was performed to estimate the parameters of the Langmuir Hinshelwood type kinetic equation. Reaction mass obtained during kinetics was subjected to separation and purification. Molecular sieves (MS) were used to remove water. Distillation (simple and extractive distillation – with entrainer, dimethyl sulfoxide, DMSO) was used to obtain almost pure AcOH, EtOH, EtAc and DMSO. Future work in reactive separation environment is indicated. Use of EtOH as the limiting reactant, use of MS for water removal and complete separation sequence are important features of this work.