The development of the process of ethyl acetate obtaining by dehydrogenation of ethanol

Abstract

The work is dedicated to the development of the domestic process of catalytic dehydrogenation of ethanol to ethyl acetate – a product that is widely used as a solvent in the manufacturing of paints, drugs, printing inks for food industry. The process is an alternative to the traditional method of production of ethyl acetate - acetic acid etherification with ethanol. The only feed in the developed process is ethanol (bioethanol). Compared with the traditional process, despite the reversibility is virtually no waste of feed, there are no corrosive medium and waste water. The industrial catalysts NTK type are used for the dehydrogenation of ethanol in ethyl acetate, they differ in chemical composition (producer – JSC «Dorogobuzh»). Testing of the catalysts was carried out in flow laboratory unit in the temperature range 230–300 °C and pressures of 0,1–2,0 MPa. The best results were obtained on the catalyst NTK- : it allows to reach the ethanol conversion per pass-flow from 40 to  3 % with selectivity of 86–94 %. NTK-4 catalyst showed reliable  erformance and reproducibility of results in laboratory conditions, it is assumed sampling process in a pilot plant. The process is interesting for enterprises of small capacity (not willing to work with sulfuric acid according to the traditional method), carrying out activities in the area solvents, paint industry, the packaging material.