Pervaporation is unique among membrane separations

involving a change of phase to achieve separation. Its most potential application is the use of pervaporation process to drive an equilibrated reaction

such as esterification

etherification

synthesis of methyl isobutyl ketone. In a membrane reactor

pervaporation has been applied to the continuous removal of water from esterification reaction mixture. For a special reaction system

if the kinetic model is established

the relationship between reagent conversion

product yield and water concentration can all be described by it at the same time. It can provide the theoretical basis for process economic evaluation

defining the optimum reaction conditions and for predicting the reaction system status. For the esterification coupled pervaporation membrane reactor

many studies have been done concerning the coupled membrane process kinetic model. But

some important factors

such as reaction-separation temperature and feed water concentration which are always unavoidable in industries were not taken into consideration in these kinetic models. On the other hand

a standard method for defining water permeance has not been established yet. So

in these studies

the established kinetic models can only simulate the coupled membrane process under limited conditions. In this study

pervaporation separation of ethanol-water azeotropic mixture and the experiments of pervaporation coupled esterification are carried out in a batch reactor with the membrane area of 19.2 cm~2. PPVA/PAN composite membrane is prepared and used in the coupled membrane reactor. Through combining the kinetic equation of esterification and the kinetic equation of pervaporation

a kinetic model for esterification-pervaporation coupled composite membrane process is established:dXdt=n_0kV-1.8×10~-5n_0 (X-Y)(1-X)(R_1-X)-XK(Y+R_2) dYdt=dXdt-pS(X+R_2)V-1.8×10~-5n_0 (X-Y)exp-E_aRT All the factors that may influence the shift of esterification chemical equilibrium are all taken into consideration in this kinetic model. At the same time

the method for defining the modeling parameter

p

is determined. The above equations can be solved numerically by using a personal computer and the Runge-Kutta method to yield the concentrations of different species in the reactor under different reaction conditions and times. The studying results showed that the experimental data and the simulation data obtained from the same reaction condition are in good agreement. Therefore we can be concluded that the established kinetic model of pervaporation-esterification coupled composite membrane reactor can predict the reaction-separation process exactly.