Development of an Activity Based Kinetic Model for an Esterification Process with Indion 180 Catalyst

Abstract

Abstract The kinetics of esterification reaction between acetic acid and methanol was studied with the Indion 180 catalyst in the temperature range between 323.15 and 353.15K, and the catalyst loading between 0.01 g/cc to0.05 g/cc. The effects of temperature, catalyst loading, size of the catalyst and agitation speed on the reaction rate were investigated. The experimental results have shown the negligible effect of mass transfer resistances on the reaction rate. A second order kinetic rate expression was used to correlate the experimental data. An activity based kinetic model was also developed for the esterification process, which was validated against experimental results. The activity based model is found advantageous as it involves only two reaction rate parameters which were determined based on the kinetic rate parameters of the concentration based model. The comparison of the model predictions with the experimental results for different temperature and catalyst loading conditions has shown the better suitability of the activity based kinetic model for the esterification process with Indion 180 catalyst.