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Abstract

A model has been developed to study the effects of chemical kinetics on the residue curve maps (RCM) for reactive distillation systems with liquid phase splitting. In the model, chemical reaction can occur in both or only one of the two liquid phases. The heating policy V/V-0 = H/H-0 is applied so that the kinetic effect can be described by a single parameter, the Damkohler number Da. The effects of reaction kinetics on pseudohomogeneous and heterogeneous mixtures have been compared. The properties of their RCMs are the same outside, but are fully different inside the liquid-liquid (L-L) region if they have different chemical equilibrium curves. Inside the L-L region, the chemical equilibrium curve coincides to a unique reactive liquid-liquid tie line in case that the pseudohomogeneous chemical equilibrium curve intersects with the L-L envelope. When the reaction occurs in only one of the two liquid phases, the residue curves inside the L-L region are strongly affected by the L-L. envelope, especially at high Da. In the present paper, first an illustrative arbitrary reaction system, and then the reaction of cyclohexene with water to cyclohexanol are analysed with respect to their RCMs. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.