Questions regarding the synthesis of dimethyl ether through gas-phase dehydration of crude methanol

Thread Content

Take the most widely used Southwest Plant process as an example. If crude methanol is used as the starting material, it contains organic acids, light components, heavy components, methanol, water, and so on. Due to the presence of organic acids, the methanol vaporization tower is likely to suffer from severe corrosion problems. I wonder how this issue is usually addressed? Is it by adding alkali at the crude methanol feed point to neutralize it or even make it weakly alkaline? 2 Could the light components in crude methanol (here mainly referring to alkane oils, excluding inert gases) have an impact on the catalyst (r-Al2O3)? 3 Could the fusel oils (such as ethanol) that enter the reactor along with vaporized methanol undergo cross-dehydration or self-dehydration between alcohols under the action of the catalyst to form furans? If that happens, it will reduce the purity of product DME. I would appreciate it if those who are familiar with this could give me some guidance. Thank you!