DefinePK

Abstract

One of the complex processes encountered in process industries is reactive distillation because it involves the integration of both reaction and separation in a single unit. The process becomes more complex if the column used is a packed type because, in that case, its dynamic models are combinations of both ordinary and partial differential equations. Obtaining the appropriate method that can reliably give the solutions of these complex dynamic models is one of the challenges facing Process Engineers. It has been discovered that difference formula approaches can be applied to convert the partial differential models of the process to ordinary differential model types so that the overall resulting ordinary differential dynamic models of the process can be solved with the aid of ode command of MATLAB. Therefore, this work has been carried out to demonstrate how backward, forward and central difference formula approaches involving two data points are applied in solving the dynamic models developed for the reactive packed distillation column used for the production of ethyl acetate. The results obtained from the solutions of the dynamic models using the three different difference formula approaches were compared to the measured ones to determine the reliability of each of the approaches in solving the dynamic models of the reactive packed distillation process and backward difference formula approach was discovered to be the best because the liquid ethyl acetate mole fraction and the top segment temperature it gave were found to compare very well with the measured values.