Improved design and optimization of synthetic n-Butyl acetate process to save energy

Focusing primarily on the issues of low purity and high energy consumption in n-Butyl acetate production, pressure swing reactive distillation (RD-PS) and a new process combining conventional reactive distillation and pressure swing thermal coupling (RD-PSTC) were proposed. Chemical software Aspen Plus (version 10) was used to investigate the steady state simulations of both processes. Furthermore, the energy consumption and purity of the product were utilized as the objective functions in order to achieve optimal total annual cost (TAC). Compared with RD-PS process, the obtained results showed that RD-PSTC process could save 19.86% TAC, 73.97% CO2 emissions, and 28.84% total energy consumption.