The coupled atmospheric reaction-vacuum distillation technology

that is a distillation column connected with side reactors

is employed in the production of benzyl chloride.An independent reaction amount is introduced in the reactor model to simulate the process.Moreover

a systematic design approach based on the Powell method is developed to seek the optimum configuration parameters.The effects of the design parameters

such as the number of stages in the distillation column

the number of stages between adjacent reactors and the number of reactors

on the process performance are well investigated.Results demonstrate that with the given vapor boilup rate

insufficient separation leads to a poor system performance

and excessive stages or reactors will not be benefit for the improvement of the reaction capability.The optimum match between reaction operation and separation operation can be achieved with the optimum design parameters obtained through the process design approach.