RESEARCH ARTICLE

Thermodynamic analysis of ethanol synthesis from hydration of ethylene coupled with a sequential reaction

  • Jie Gao 1,2 ,
  • Zhikai Li , 1 ,
  • Mei Dong 1 ,
  • Weibin Fan 1 ,
  • Jianguo Wang 1,2
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  • 1. State Key Laboratory of Coal Conversion, Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Taiyuan 030001, China
  • 2. University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

Received date: 26 Feb 2019

Accepted date: 05 Apr 2019

Published date: 15 Oct 2020

Copyright

2019 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature

Abstract

Coal-based ethanol production by hydration of ethylene is limited by the low equilibrium ethylene conversion at elevated temperature. To improve ethylene conversion, coupling hydration of ethylene with a potential ethanol consumption reaction was analyzed thermodynamically. Five reactions have been attempted and compared: (1) dehydration of ethanol to ethyl ether (2C2H5OHC2H5OC2H5+H2O), (2) dehydrogenation of ethanol to acetaldehyde (C2H5OHCH3CHO+H2), (3) esterification of acetic acid with ethanol (C2H5OH+CH3COOHCH3COOC2H5+H2O), (4) dehydrogenation of ethanol to ethyl acetate (2C2H5OHCH3COOC2H5+2H2), and (5) oxidative dehydrogenation of ethanol to ethyl acetate (2C2H5OH+O2CH3COOC2H5+2H2O). The equilibrium constants and equilibrium distributions of the coupled reactions were calculated and the effects of feed composition, temperature and pressure upon the ethylene equilibrium conversion were examined. The results show that dehydrogenation of ethanol to acetaldehyde has little effect on ethylene conversion, whereas for dehydrogenation of ethanol to acetaldehyde and ethyl acetate, ethylene conversion can be improved from 8% to 12.8% and 18.5%, respectively, under conditions of H2O/C2H4 = 2, 10 atm and 300°C. The esterification of acetic acid with ethanol can greatly enhance the ethylene conversion to 22.5%; in particular, ethylene can be actually completely converted to ethyl acetate by coupling oxidative dehydrogenation of ethanol.

Cite this article

Jie Gao , Zhikai Li , Mei Dong , Weibin Fan , Jianguo Wang . Thermodynamic analysis of ethanol synthesis from hydration of ethylene coupled with a sequential reaction[J]. Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering, 2020 , 14(5) : 847 -856 . DOI: 10.1007/s11705-019-1848-6

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFB0604802), the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDA21020500), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. U1862101 and 21773281), the CAS/SAFEA International Partnership Program for Creative Research Teams (No. 2015YC901) and Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Province of China (No. 201601D202014).
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