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 (Tr), catalyst loading (CC), molar ratios of reactants (MR) and ratio of effective membrane area to unit volume of reaction mixture (S/Vo) 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 Tr=60 °C, MR=3 : 1, CC=2% and S/Vo=14.1 m−1. Equilibrium conversion of acrylic acid in NIE was obtained as 55.1% at 60 °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.