Design and control of diphenyl carbonate reactive distillation processes using arrangements with heat-integrated stages

Diphenyl carbonate is a very important precursor of polycarbonate. Therefore environmental friendly chemical routes and low-cost processes are necessary to cope with its demand. In this study, a new green route to produce diphenyl carbonate and methyl acetate from the reaction between phenyl acetate and dimethyl carbonate was adopted. Also, reactive distillation (RD) is the adopted process to do the reaction and separation simultaneously because this process can overcome chemical equilibrium limitations, obtain high selectivity, and can use the heat of reaction in distillation. The advantages of RD can increase the process efficiency and reduction of investments and operational costs. This study aims to design an RD process with heat-integrated stages that can further reduce the energy consumption in comparison with conventional RD technology. At the steady state, simulation and optimization techniques were combined to find the best design while at the dynamic state, the theoretical control properties at the open loop and the close loop performance were done to find the best control scheme and controller parameters.