Greenhouse gas emissions reduction by process intensification: Reactive distillation column with side decanter

Direct hydration of cyclohexene to produce cyclohexanol is the industrial process with a lower raw material cost but with a quite expensive process. Large energy consumption is consequence of large cyclohexene recycle related with its unfavourable chemical equilibrium. This study corroborates that the Asahi process is a good candidate for intensification avoiding the cyclohexene recycle. Rigorous simulation shows that a single reactive distillation column, with a side decanter, operated at total reflux, allows overcoming the chemical equilibrium limitations as the product is continuously collected by the column bottoms and the heat of reaction is directly used to separate the product by distillation. The novel process is studied and compared to the classical Asahi process. An energy comparison with the available processes proposed in the literature is performed. Therefore, achieving more energy-efficient processes leads to lowering their environmental impact, thus decreasing the carbon dioxide emissions. Applying the proposed methodology for cyclohexanol production, more than 67,000 t CO2/y emissions can be avoided compared to the nowadays used classical process, thus the potential savings applying process intensification to the chemical industry are very large and worth further investigation.