Optimization based conceptual design of reactive distillation for selectivity engineering

This work presents some representative reactive distillation (RD) models to obtain attainable region for multi-component reaction systems when feed contains significant amount of inerts in it. One can achieve maximum selectivity for a quantitative conversion unlike conventional reactors with semibatch reactive rectification (SRR) as the best RD configuration when the inert is more volatile than the reactant. The other plausible RD configurations were suggested for different volatility patterns of the components and the inert. The MINLP optimization technique is also applied to industrially important case of dimerization of isobutylene for maximizing the selectivity towards di-isobutylene and the results were in agreement to those obtained from conceptual design. This work highlights the potential of optimization as a tool to complement the conceptual design method for selectivity engineering in RD columns.