Alkylation of benzene with ethylene in a packed reactive distillation column

The alkylation of benzene with ethylene suffers from heavy deactivation of the catalyst. However, this problem can be solved by reactive distillation, as demonstrated through experiments guided by modeling work. The simulations predict a very low liquid composition of ethylene in most of the catalyst bed. The experiments explore a low feasible molar feed ratio of benzene to ethylene, i.e., 1.5-2.0, at which ethylene can be fully converted, and the selectivity toward the desired product is higher than 99.7%. After 408 h of use, the deactivation of the catalyst is slight except for the upper part to a lesser extent. Therefore, a long life for the catalyst can be expected. One additional advantage is that the byproducts toluene and xylene are not detected in this work, which is favorable for the downstream separation process.