Premium
Process re‐intensification strategy for butyl acrylate manufacturing: Enhancement, scaling‐up and economical evaluation
Author(s) -
Constantino Dânia S. M.,
Faria Rui P. V.,
Ribeiro Ana M.,
Rodrigues Alírio E.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of advanced manufacturing and processing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2637-403X
DOI - 10.1002/amp2.10048
Subject(s) - process engineering , scale up , acrylate , process (computing) , productivity , environmental science , production (economics) , computer science , scaling , work (physics) , materials science , mathematics , mechanical engineering , engineering , composite material , geometry , operating system , polymer , physics , monomer , classical mechanics , economics , macroeconomics
Abstract Significant improvements in the butyl acrylate production have emerged with process intensification strategies that combine reaction and separation processes in the same equipment. Meanwhile, a new approach based on process re‐intensification concept has been addressed. This was accomplished by combining two different separation processes with reaction, in this case, membrane pervaporation and simulated moving bed technology, with reaction, giving rise to the simulated moving bed membrane reactor (PermSMBR) technology. In this work, the PermSMBR was significantly enhanced by removing the extract stream and, consequently, reducing the number of operating sections, from four to three (PermSMBR‐3s), leading to a considerable reduction of the eluent consumption by 98% and improving the productivity by 34%. Additionally, the scaling up of the PermSMBR‐3s at industrial scale is also addressed considering a competitive production capacity, 50 000 t BAc ·year −1 . With that, a reduction of 56% in the eluent consumption was obtained relatively to the simulated moving bed reactor at the same scale, with a significant productivity enhancement of 49%. Moreover, a brief economic analysis showed that this process presents an economic potential of 491 €·t BAc −1 . Since this value is inside of the range obtained for other process intensification strategies (454‐593 €·t BAc −1 ) presented in the literature, so far, PermSMBR‐3s seems to be a very promising and competitive strategy for butyl acrylate manufacturing.