ABSTRACT
In the past decades, hybrid processes combining reaction and separation mechanisms into a single integrated operation became increasingly interesting for designers in chemical industry. Such combined processes are usually called reactive separation processes. The etherification reaction is a typical example of such a process which
uses carboxylic acids like formic or acetic acid as raw materials. For reliable design of a separation unit, accurate experimental data on vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE) are required. In many practical systems, the interactions between the molecules are quite strong due to charge transfer and hydrogen bonding. This occurs in pure components such as alcohol, carboxylic acids, water and HF and leads to quite different behavior of vapors of these substances. Considering the interactions so strong that new chemical species are formed, the thermodynamic treatment assumes that the properties deviate from an ideal gas mainly due to the associating species. These interactions may strongly affect the thermodynamic properties of the fluids. Thus, the chemical equilibria between clusters should be taken into account in order to develop a reliable thermodynamic model.
