The Simulation and Control of the Reactive Distillation Process for Dimethylcarbonate(DMC) Production

Reactive distillation (RD) is a combination process where both separation and reaction are considered simultaneously in a single vessel. This kind of combination to enhance the overall performance is not a new attempt in the chemical engineering areas. The recovery of ammonia in the classic Solvay process for soda ash of the 1860s may be cited as probably the first commercial application of RD. The RD system has been used for a long time as a useful process and recently the importance of the RD is enlarged more and more. In addition to that, the application fields of RD are diversely diverged. To make the most of the characteristic of RD system, we must decide the best operating condition under which the process shows the most effective productivity and should decide the best control algorithm which satisfies an optimal operating condition. Phosgene which is a highly reactive chemical is used for the production of isocyanates and polycarbonates. Because it has high reactivity and toxicity, its utilization is increasingly burdened by growing safety measures to be adopted during its production. Dimethyl Carbonate (DMC) was proposed as a substitute of phosgene because it is non-toxic and environmentally benign chemical. In this study, RD is used for DMC production process and the transesterification is performed inside of column to produce DMC. In transesterification, the methanol and ethylene carbonate (EC) are used as the reactants. This process use homogeneous catalyst and the azeotrope exists between the reactant and product. Owing to azeotrope, we should use two distillation columns. For this DMC production process, we can suggest two configurations. One is EC excess process and the other is methanol excess process. From the comparison of steady state simulation results where the Naphtali-Sandholm algorithm is used, it showed the better performance to use the methanol excess process configuration than EC excess process. Then, the dynamic simulation was performed to be based on the steady state simulation results and the optimal control system was designed. In addition to that, the optimal operating condition was suggested from previous results.