Study on Esterification of Ethylene Glycol With Acetic Acid in the Presence of Seralite SRC-120 and Molecular Sieve 13X Catalyst

Abstract

There is an increasing the trend of chemical industries toward new processes that should meets more requirement such as generation of nearly zero waste chemicals, less energy, and sufficient uses of product chemicals in various application. Esterification is the general name for a chemical reaction in which two reactants ethylene glycol and acetic acid form an ester as a product. Since the reaction was occurred in equilibrium and reversible manner, the reaction was become slowly without catalyst.The reaction was carried out in the presence of Seralite SRC-120 and Molecular Sieve 13x as acid catalyst with investigated temperature range from 333 to 363 K and varying amount of 0.5wt% to 2.0wt% catalyst load. It was found that as increase reaction time as increase mole fraction of product, conversion of reactant and selectivity of ethylene glycol di-acetate (EGDA) but decrease the selectivity of ethylene glycol mono-acetate (EGMA). The maximum conversion of acetic acid and ethylene glycol were obtained 46.12% and 100% during 10 hour reaction time with 1.5wt% amount of catalyst loading respectively. But Molecular sieve 13x has been given only 78% conversion of ethylene glycol with 4.0 wt% catalyst loading The selectivity of ethylene glycol di-acetate has been observed 66 percentages with amount of 0.5wt% Seralite SRC-120 as a catalyst. However the product selectivity with Molecular Sieve 13X was found to be very less. In the present work, parameter estimation has been done by using non-linear least square method with the help of Matlab modeling software. Best fit equilibrium constant and activation energy was found for reaction system.