Response surface methodology optimization and kinetic study of isobutene/2-butene alkylation reaction

The multi-factorial analysis was carried out for the alkylation reaction of isobutene/2-butene with response surface methodology (RSM), and a quadratic model was developed. The reaction conditions optimized by the quadratic model were obtained as follows: reaction time of 7 min, reaction temperature of 5 °C, and stirring speed of 1500 rpm. The relative error between the estimated value (76.72%) and the experimental value (77.47%) of the selectivity of TMPs was 0.98% under such reaction condition. The model well represents the correlation between the selectivity of TMPs with the reaction time, reaction temperature and stirring speed. The kinetic model for the alkylation reaction of isobutene/2-butene was developed according to the classical carbonium ion mechanism, where the catalyst was sulfuric acid. The kinetic parameters were fitted with nonlinear least squares to obtain reasonable rate constants and confidence intervals. The activation energies and pre-exponential factors calculated from the Arrhenius relationships, where the activation energy of the main reaction was 16.03 kJ/mol, and the activation energies of other side reactions ranged from − 62.59 to 59.94 kJ/mol. Graphical abstract