Simulated moving bed reactor processes for the industrial production of butyl acrylate

The present work aims the development of alternative processes to produce 50,000 ton/year of butyl acrylate with an assay of 99.5%, taking advantage of the potential of the simulated moving bed reactor (SMBR) technology. In a first approach, a SMBR unit was used to simultaneously synthesize and separate the reaction products together with a distillation column to purify butyl acrylate and a pervaporation module to recycle the desorbent (butanol). Compared to the current industrial process the number of unit operations was reduced as the energy consumption was decreased significantly. An additional process was design in which a fixed bed reactor was introduced before the SMBR to extend the reactants conversion. This modification resulted in a significant improvement of the overall process performance, leading to an increase in the productivity of approximately 40% and in a decrease of the energy demand around 30%.