Feasible products for kinetically controlled reactive distillation of ternary mixtures

A method to determine feasible product compositions from a single‐feed reactive distillation column for finite rates of reaction is presented. Tracking of pinch points to estimate the limit at minimum reflux is combined with performance modeling for the limit at the minimum number of stages. Using two examples it is shown how the product composition regions deform from the known limit of no reaction through intermediate rates of reaction and finally collapse onto the chemical equilibrium curve at extremely fast reaction rates. However, compositions can be achieved at intermediate reaction rates that do not lie between the limits for slow (no reaction) and fast (chemical equilibrium) reactions.