Simulation studies of Methyl Tert-butyl Ether production in reactive distillation

Methyl Tert-butyl Ether (MTBE) is usually used as solvent, chemical reagent and antiknock additive to improve octane number of gasoline and can be efficiently produced using reactive distillation column. Maximum production of the MTBE can be achieved if the reaction can be kept at optimum operating conditions and column configuration. In practice, changing the column configuration such as tray or catalyst location always incurs high cost. Therefore, the development of the MTBE reactive distillation model can serve as an important tool in predicting and investigating the optimum production for MTBE without the need to run the actual experiment. Therefore, the development of the MTBE reactive distillation model is essential to simulate the process which can lead to high yields of MTBE production. In this work, a detailed equilibrium (EQ) model for continuous reactive distillation (RD) processes is developed using Aspen Plus™ and Matlab™ software. The simulation results achieved is compared with data available in the literature. The validated model is then further used to study the interaction of various inputs and output variables of the MTBE process which can be used for future empirical model development and control studies.