Esterification of acrylic acid with ethanol using pervaporation membrane reactor

Esterification of acrylic acid with ethanol was carried out using an in-situ reactor with an integrated pervaporation assembly (IPAE) made of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) membrane and was compared with a non-integrated (NIE) system. Effect of reaction temperature (T-r), catalyst loading (C-C), molar ratios of reactants (M-R) and ratio of effective membrane area to unit volume of reaction mixture (S/V-o) on kinetics of esterification reaction were studied. Conversions achieved in IPAE were found to be distinctly higher than the NIE. The highest conversion of acrylic acid was obtained as 83.3% at T-r= 60 degrees C, M-R= 3 : 1, C-C= 2% and S/V-o= 14.1m(-1). Equilibrium conversion of acrylic acid in NIE was obtained as 55.1% at 60 degrees C, 1 : 1 in 7 h, while using IPAE conversion enhances to 67.6%. Esterification of acrylic acid and ethanol with presently studied operating parameters provides a new approach to existing literature reported esterification-pervaporation system.