Evaluation on the solketal production processes: Rigorous design, optimization, environmental analysis, and control

This works aims at evaluating different process configurations for producing solketal from reacting glycerol with acetone. The research carries out the regression of thermodynamic and kinetic parameters, rigorous design of four process configurations, optimization, carbon emission analysis, and control. The results from steady-state analysis reveal that the solvent-free coupled reaction/distillation (SFCRD) process is the most promising. It reduces 40.09% of total annual cost and 45.09% of CO₂ emission from the base case, the separated reactor-distillation process. Besides, the CO₂ emission rate of the SFCRD process is found 35.29% and 65.91% less than the recently reported upper and the middle partition reactive dividing-wall column process, respectively, indicating the unfavorability of intensifying this reacting system through reactive distillation. Finally, a control structure for the SFCRD process is established for effectively handling the disturbances from the flowrate, composition and catalyst deactivation. Through the dynamic simulation, the closed-loop control results were revealed satisfactory.