Simulation study of different pressure thermally coupled reactive distillation column for hydrolysis of methyl acetate

A different pressure thermally coupled reactive distillation column was proposed for the methyl acetate hydrolysis process by combining differential thermal coupled distillation with reactive distillation. It was verified that UNIQ-HOC model can be successfully applied to VLE prediction of this system. The main parameters affecting the process were investigated and the optimized operating parameters were obtained. The results show that the different pressure thermally coupled reactive distillation process can save about 89% of energy compared with the conventional process.