Ethyl acetate production
AssigneeGreenyug, LLC
InventorSagar B Gadewar
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A process for the production of high purity ethyl acetate from ethanol is described. The process involves reacting ethanol over a suitable catalyst in a reactive distillation column. The reactive distillation setup allows overcoming the reaction equilibrium for increased conversion of ethanol. Hydrogen is removed as the distillate and ethyl acetate is obtained as a bottoms product from the reactive distillation column. A feed of hydrogen at the bottom of the column and a suitable hydrogenation catalyst placed at the bottom of the column allows for a significant reduction of impurities such as butan-2-one, butyraldehyde in the ethyl acetate product. Adding side reactors to the reactive distillation column allows additional catalyst holdup for improved reactant conversion.
Claims20
A reactive distillation process producing high purity ethyl acetate from ethanol, comprising:
- feeding a feed stream comprising ethanol to a reactive distillation column;
- contacting the ethanol with a catalyst within the reactive distillation column, wherein the catalyst is disposed in the reactive distillation column;
- dehydrogenating ethanol over the catalyst in the reactive distillation column in the liquid phase;
- removing ethyl acetate during the distillation process as a liquid bottoms product;
- and
- removing hydrogen during the distillation process as a gaseous top product.
A reactive distillation process producing high purity ethyl acetate from ethanol, comprising:
- feeding a first feed stream comprising ethanol and a second feed stream comprising hydrogen to a reactive distillation column, wherein the first feed stream is fed to the reactive distillation column at a point above the second feed stream, wherein the reactive distillation column comprises:
- a dehydrogenation catalyst zone, wherein the first feed stream is above or near the top of said dehydrogenation catalyst zone, and
- a hydrogenation catalyst zone below the dehydrogenation catalyst zone, wherein the second feed stream is below, near the bottom of, or within said hydrogenation catalyst zone;
- dehydrogenating ethanol over a dehydrogenation catalyst in the dehydrogenation catalyst zone during a distillation process to produce ethyl acetate and hydrogen,
- removing the ethyl acetate during the distillation process as a liquid bottoms product;
- and
- removing the hydrogen during the distillation process as a gaseous top product.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.