Single phase ester feed for hydrogenolysis

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-8975451-B2
Application number	US-201313833994-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Mar 15, 2013
Priority date	Mar 15, 2013
Publication date	Mar 10, 2015
Grant date	Mar 10, 2015

Abstract

The process involves esterifying ethanol and acetic acid to produce an esterification product that is in a single phase that is directly reduced, by hydrogenolysis, to produce ethanol. The single phase is not capable of separating. Feeding a single phase feed stream reduces the separation of the esterification product. Hydrogen may be fed to the esterification reactor that operates at a high pressure that is substantially similar to or greater than the hydrogenolysis reactor.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A method of producing ethanol comprising:
esterifying acetic acid and ethanol in a first reaction zone to produce an effluent that comprises from 20 wt. % to 70 wt. % ethanol and is in a single phase, wherein the first reaction zone is operated in the vapor phase;
adding hydrogen to the effluent to form a feed stream;
reacting the feed stream in a second reaction zone under conditions to reduce ethyl acetate to ethanol to produce a crude reactor pr…

Assignees

• Celanese Int Corp

Inventors

• Sonnenberg Tatiana H
• Qi Wei
• Warner R Jay

Classifications

• C07C29/149 Primary

  Chemistry & Metallurgy · mapped topic

• C07C29/80

  Chemistry & Metallurgy · mapped topic