Ethyl levulinate, one of the main derivatives of levulinic acid (LA), is of significant potential as platform chemicals for bio-based materials. The esterification of LA was generally carried out in a conventional batch reactor or in a conventional reactive distillation column. However, traditional methods are hard to deal with equilibrium limited reactions and azeotropic issues. Therefore, the inter-integration reactive distillation with vapor permeation (R-VP-D) process, which integrated reaction, vapor permeation, and distillation into one single unit, is proposed in this paper and validated in the pilot-scale experiments. A comparative study is made between a pilot-scale RD column with and without VP module. Owing to the water-selective VP membrane and the ingenious design of related apparatuses, the R-VP-D process reveal a superiority in LA conversion of 21.9% maximum higher than RD without VP process and removing of product water about 53.6% from VP module, which indicates its promising industrial application in process intensification field.

中文翻译：

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用于乙酰丙酸乙酯生产的蒸汽渗透一体化反应蒸馏：设备开发和实验验证

乙酰丙酸乙酯是乙酰丙酸 (LA) 的主要衍生物之一，具有作为生物基材料平台化学品的巨大潜力。LA的酯化通常在常规间歇反应器或常规反应蒸馏塔中进行。然而，传统方法难以处理平衡受限反应和共沸问题。因此，本文提出了将反应、蒸汽渗透和蒸馏集成为一个单元的一体化反应蒸馏与蒸汽渗透（R-VP-D）工艺，并在中试规模实验中得到了验证。在带有和不带有 VP 模块的中试规模 RD 柱之间进行了比较研究。由于水选择性VP膜和相关装置的巧妙设计，