Kinetic Study of the Aldol Condensation of Isobutyraldehyde Catalyzed by Sodium Hydroxide

The initial step of works on the designing of a mathematical model of a commercial process to manufacture a mixture of butyric acid hydroxyesters, for use in ecological solvent compositions for the paint and varnish industry, is presented in the paper. The works referred to in this paper relate the mathematical model of the condensation reactor. A unit process kinetic model was designed based on an analysis of the general differential form of the equation of the reactor mass balance and an analysis of the mechanism of the Tishchenko aldol condensation reaction, as used in the synthesis of butyric acid hydroxyesters, confirmed by the results of GC/MS analysis. The forms of the kinetic equations obtained were verified experimentally by determining the values of the respective reaction rate constants.