ABSTRACT
Flora T. T. Ng, Yuxiang Zheng, and Garry L. Rempel Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
ABSTRACT
Catalytic distillation (CD) is a green reactor technology which combines reaction and separation in a single reactor/distillation column. CD has a number of advantages including increased conversion for equilibrium limited reactions. It is also more energy efficient and reduces the need for waste treatment due to the high selectivity to desired products. CD has been applied successfully in the petroleum and petrochemical industry, notably the production of methyl-tertiary butyl ether. However, there are limited examples using CD for the synthesis of organic chemicals and solvents. This paper will discuss the aldol condensation of acetone and the synthesis of ethylene glycol monoethyl ether to illustrate the applications of CD for organic synthesis.
