A new experimental apparatus is being constructed in the chemical engineering unit operations laboratory at Lehigh University. The equipment illustrates the effects of various design and operating parameters in a coupled chemical process: a reactor with a distillation column mounted on top. While distillation and reaction processes are well established, the design and operation of the coupled units represent a novel and challenging problem for chemical engineering undergraduates. When appropriate, this type of reactive distillation process has significant advantages over the decoupled system: (1) yields and conversions can be increased and reactor size reduced by removing one of the products of the reaction by distillation, and (2) energy consumption can be reduced by using the heat of reaction to generate vapor for the separation in the column. The major pieces of the apparatus are a reactor and distillation column, and other equipment include condenser, reflux drum, vacuum pumps, control valves, feed and reflux pumps, and tankage for feed and products. The experiment is used in a senior laboratory for undergraduate chemical engineering students, and is the first time that these students have been exposed to a complex process which combines two unit operations. Thus, it provides a deeper understanding of the underlying principles involved in the design and operation of both chemical reactors and distillation columns, and illustrates the sometimes obvious and the sometimes subtle interactions between these two operations.
