Industrial Applications of Reactive Distillation: Recent TrendsRameshwar S. Hiwale, Nitin V. Bhate, Yogesh S. Mahajan, and Sanjay M. MahajaniInternational Journal of Chemical Reactor Engineering 2004, vol.2ISSN 1542-6580
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AbstractLast few years have seen a dramatic rise in the number of applications of
reactive distillation (RD). This useful technology is now being applied for any
scale of operation- from manufacture of fine chemicals to that of bulk chemicals.
This article reviews the very recent applications and serves as a supplement for
the exhaustive review on this subject by Sharma and Mahajani (2003). It not
only furnishes the information on the ongoing research in the existing applications
but also elaborates the newly discovered applications such as manufacture
of phenol, linear alkyl benzene, carbonates, chlorosilane derivatives and chiral
chemicals. Multiple reactions in RD, failure of RD in some cases and new RD
configurations to increase the overall yields are some of the additional aspects
being covered.
KEYWORDS: Reactive distillation, Catalytic Distillation, Etherification, Hydrogenation,
Esterfication