Comparative Study of Reactive Flash Distillation vs Semibatch Reactor Technologies for the Glycerol Hydrochlorination with Gaseous HCl

The present work provides a systematic comparison of solvent-free glycerol hydrochlorination with semibatch and reactive flash distillation technologies. All the experiments were performed at atmospheric pressure and constant flow rate of gaseous HCl in the temperature range of 70 to 120 °C. Both acetic acid and adipic acid were used as homogeneous catalysts, separately, at a concentration of 12% by moles of each. In addition, a series of noncatalytic experiments was investigated. A comparative analysis between reactive flash distillation and semibatch operation suggested that reactive flash distillation only increases the production rate of the desired product 1,3-dichloropropan-2-ol (αγ-DCP) for the highest temperature, i.e. 120 °C. Many aspects of the HCl liquid uptake were also exposed once water was allowed to leave the liquid phase, revealing that water also has a positive influence on the reaction rate because it promotes HCl solubility and hydrolysis. Such an important effect was not predicted by ...