Is it effective to add a base to a solution consisting of 70% methanol and 20% methyl acetate in order to remove methyl acetate?
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In the primary distillate of the company’s methanol distillation process, 70% is methanol and 20% is methyl acetate. What do you think – is it effective to use alkalis to remove methyl acetate? In any case, our distillation tower isn’t capable of handling these two components
This is definitely not appropriate. Think about it: how much alkali is needed for 20% ethyl acetate? It’s a cost issue. The main point is that you add alkali in order to remove impurities, but sodium acetate, which is formed as a result of adding alkali, becomes another impurity. So what’s the point of that? You can consider other special distillation methods such as extractive distillation to see if they work; since their boiling points are similar, a conventional distillation column would require a large number of trays to achieve separation, which is not practical for industrial production.
One has a boiling point of 77, and the other has a boiling point of 64; consider designing a heat-pump distillation process.
It seems that trying to handle it simply is no longer realistic
It seems I need to find an extractant; it would be best if it could be simple as well
How much is there of this material? The azeotic composition of methyl acetate and methanol is approximately 20% methanol and 80% methyl acetate; it should be possible to recover some of the methanol as well. If the amount of methyl acetate is high, this accumulation of an azeotrope can occur, followed by hydrogenation to produce methanol and ethanol.
40 tons per month – it’s not a large volume, so hydrogenation isn’t necessary; for a small factory like ours, the investment required would be too high
Distillation can also be used to recover some methanol, but the remaining azeotrope of methyl acetate and methanol has to be found a way to dispose of.
18061923257 – We can handle it; it has proper qualifications