Comparison of the performance of integrated and sequential reaction and separation units in terms of recovery of a desired product

Abstract

Integration of reaction and separation has experienced fast progress in this decade because it provides a convenient way of alleviating kinetic and/or thermodynamic constraints usually present in the more traditional sequential con"guration (where reaction is followed by separation), which limit the extent of reaction and also the purity of the products obtained thereby. The aim of this work was to quantitatively compare the "nal recovery of a desired product in an integrated processing unit and in a sequential one, in the case of a unireactant/uniproduct reaction occuring in an (ideal) liquid phase with separation via liquid/vapor equilibrium. The objective function was set as the local temperature which maximizes the recovery of product in the vapor phase leaving the integrated unit or the separator (as appropriate). It was concluded that (i) the optimum temperature looks as a local maximum for the integrated system and as a global maximum for the sequential one, (ii) it strongly depends on the equilibrium constant of the reaction in question and (iii) it assumes lower (and economically feasible) values only in the case of the integrated unit