Study on Feasibility of Reactive Distillation Process for the Direct Hydration of Cyclohexene to Cyclohexanol Using a Cosolvent

A reactive distillation process is suggested for the production of cyclohexanol from cyclohexene and water using 1,4-dioxane as cosolvent and ion-exchange resin A-36 as catalyst. It not only can avoid the drawbacks of the conventional direct hydration of cyclohexene process, but also has more advantages than it, especially greatly improving conversion and reaction rate. On the basis of the fixed point analysis of residue curve maps, the feasibility of this novel process is analyzed and verified. The phase equilibrium and reaction kinetic experiments are carried out to correlate the parameters in activity coefficient model and kinetic model, respectively, which are necessary for calculating residue curve.