Reactive distillation (RD) is a useful process intensification technique used in the chemical process industries as it offers important advantages such as energy and cost savings, relative to conventional technologies. However, industrial application of RD is still limited by the complexity of designing and understanding such a complex process. While simple, robust shortcut design methods that require only basic information (such as the relative volatility of components) exist for conventional distillation, such methods for evaluating the applicability of RD are not yet established.

This work fills this gap by presenting a new systematic framework for assessing the RD applicability based on a mapping method. The method enables RD designs to be screened using only relative volatilities and chemical equilibrium constant as input data. The evaluation focuses on reactions involving four components (A + B ⇌ C + D) with various boiling point orders, which are of most industrial importnace. The proposed systematic framework is validated through its application to five case studies, (trans-)esterifications presenting various separation challenges due to the formation of azeotropes. This novel approach offers a valuable aid for engineers in taking an educated go/no-go decision in the very initial stages of conceptual design, before performing any rigorous simulations of RD flowsheets.

反应蒸馏（RD）是化学过程工业中使用的一种有用的过程强化技术，因为与传统技术相比，它具有重要的优势，例如能源和成本节省。但是，RD的工业应用仍然受到设计和理解这种复杂过程的复杂性的限制。对于常规蒸馏，虽然存在仅需要基本信息（例如组分的相对挥发性）的简单，可靠的快捷设计方法，但尚未建立用于评估RD适用性的方法。

这项工作通过提出一种基于映射方法评估RD适用性的新系统框架，填补了这一空白。该方法能够仅使用相对挥发度和化学平衡常数作为输入数据来筛选RD设计。评估的重点是涉及沸点各不相同的四个成分（A + B + C + D）的反应，这在工业上是最重要的。通过将其应用于五个案例研究，验证了所提出的系统框架，由于共沸物的形成，（酯交换）酯化提出了各种分离挑战。这种新颖的方法为工程师在进行RD流程图的任何严格模拟之前，在概念设计的最初阶段做出有根据的/不可行的决策提供了宝贵的帮助。