Simulation of differential pressure thermally coupled reactive distillation column

In order to reduce the energy consumption of reactive distillation process,a novel distillation process was proposed for the synthesis of n-butyl acetate by combining differential pressure thermally coupled distillation with reactive distillation.Both the new process and conventional reactive distillation process were simulated with Aspen Plus.The influence of important parameters,such as the compression ratio,feed location and the mole ratio of alcohol to acid,on the performance of the novel process was studied.The results show that the energy consumption of the new process can be reduced by about 40% comparing with that of conventional process.