Production of purified DME by reactive distillation was demonstrated experimentally and the first validated process simulation model in literature for this derived.

Distillation, absorption and extraction belong to the oldest and most mature separation technologies. They require often big columns and are energy intensive. In the chemical processing industry these separations are applied usually for the purification of the products, recycling of solvents or catalysts, etc. and are placed as a last step of a production process, after the chemical reactor(s)....

An unconstrained model predictive control (MPC) strategy is presented for single input-single output (SISO) control of a reactive distillation column. The predictive model of the MPC is based on the autoregressive moving average (ARX) model structure, whose parameters are updated on-line using the process measurement information. The design and performance of the control strategy is evaluated b...

Methyl valerate (VAME), also known as methyl pentanoate, is the methyl ester of the pentanoic acid (valeric acid). VAME is usually used as fragrance in the production of beauty care, soap and laundry detergents. High purity of VAME can also be used as plasticizer. This study presents the design details of the process for the manufacture of VAME. Reactive distillation column (RDC) is used in the...