Dynamic investigation of high-purity/high-conversion generic reactive distillation

Abstract This paper presents the nonlinear dynamic analysis of an ideal two-reactant-two product reactive distillation. The impact of disturbance magnitudes and directions on openloop stability of the system is studied. An analysis of the physicochemical phenomena present in reactive distillation processes that, under certain operational conditions, causes special types of nonlinear behavior is carried. Operating two-reactant-twoproduct reactive distillation with excess of heavy reactant is found to enhance openloop stability, but decreases the products purity. However, excess of more volatile reactant drifts the system to another state. It is found that openloop reactive distillation system has a better dynamics when operated with fixing reflux ratio instead of reflux rate.