Thesis (M.Eng.)--Chulalongkorn University, 2005

This thesis concerns catalyst screening for the synthesis of tert-amyl ethyl ether (TAEE) an alternative oxygenate for MTBE replacement, from a liquid-phase reaction between tert-amyl alcohol (TAA) and ethanol (EtOH). Various commercial catalysts; i.e., Amberlyst-15, Amberlyst-16, Amberlyst-36, Amberlyst-131, beta-Zeolite with Si/Al = 13.5 and 40, and Dowex 50WX8, were tested by performing the reaction in a semi batch reactor operated at temperature at 353 K and pressure of 810.4 kPa. The dehydration of TAA to IA was found to be a major side reaction in this system. Amberlyst-16 shows the best performance in terms of selectivity and yield. Therefore, it was further investigated in the kinetic study using the same reactor. Three temperature levels of 333, 343 and 353 K were performed to obtain the parameters in the Arrheniuss equation and the Vant Hoff equation. Two activity-based kinetic models of Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) and Power Law (PL) were fitted with the experiment result. It was observed that L-H showed the best reaction rate description. In addition, the mole fraction-based PL model is also included in this study to follow the requirement of the ASPEN PLUS program, which is used in the simulation studies of reactive distillation, a promising process for equilibrium-limited reactions. The effects of various operating parameters such as reflux ratio, catalyst weight, location of fee stage and reaction section, heat duty and operating pressure on the reactive distillation performance were simulated