Simulation Of Reactive Distillation Column

Reactive distillation processes couple chemical reactions and physical separations into a single unit operation. The ethyl acetate production by esterification reaction is equilibrium limited and is suitable to be carried out in a distillation column. In the present work, a reactive distillation column for the production of ethyl acetate is simulated using Aspen Plus. The component compositions and temperature at each stage of the column are predicted. The effect of feed stream(s) arrangement on the simulation results is presented.