Acetic acid Process Flowsheets & Simulations
Explore 3 validated, solved Acetic acid simulation flowsheets in MaximaLabs — real components: methanol, carbon_monoxide, acetic_acid, water, diisobutyl_ketone. Open any one directly in your browser.
Solved via: PENG-ROBINSON, NRTL-ASSOCIATE.
Acetic acid via methanol carbonylation (Cativa process)
Methanol carbonylated with CO to acetic acid over the iridium-based Cativa catalyst (BP Chemicals), which runs at higher selectivity and lower water content than the older Monsanto rhodium process. The homogeneous catalyst itself isn't a flowing component in this model -- only the carbonylation stoichiometry and downstream light-ends recovery are represented. Unreacted CO is flashed off and a column strips residual methanol from the acetic acid product.
9 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
17 0
View & openDilute acetic acid recovery by extractive distillation
Recovering acetic acid from a dilute aqueous stream (e.g. cellulose acetate or terephthalic acid plant wastewater) using diisobutyl ketone (DIBK) as an extractive entrainer. Because acetic acid and water form no azeotrope but have a relative volatility that flattens toward 1 as the mixture concentrates, straight distillation needs an impractically tall column and heavy reboil duty; the entrainer raises water's relative volatility so the extractive column takes water overhead in far fewer stages, and a second column then strips the entrainer from the acid bottoms for recycle.
7 unit ops • PENG-ROBINSON
17 0
View & openAcetic acid recovery — NRTL with vapor-phase dimerization
Concentrating dilute aqueous acetic acid (30 mol%) to a 99.8% acetic-acid bottoms product by distillation, modeled with the NRTL activity package and chemical-theory vapor-phase association (acetic acid dimerizes, 2 A -> A2, in the vapor). This is the physics a cubic equation of state gets wrong: the pinned NRTL acetic-acid/water binary (DECHEMA) plus the cited dimerization constants (Nagy et al., Molecules 2020) give the real bubble curve and latent heat, so the close-boiling acid/water pair actually separates and converges where Peng-Robinson does not. Honesty note: acetic acid and water are close-boiling with no azeotrope, so the water distillate is only ~87% water (the acid product is the concentrated, high-purity stream); a sharper water cut needs more stages / reflux than this screening case uses.
4 unit ops • NRTL-ASSOCIATE
18 0
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