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Hello,

I am currently an undergraduate in chemical engineering. In my Senior Design class, my group was assigned a project called:

Methacrylic Acid to Methylmethacrylate
(Bruce Vrana, DuPont, January 1999)

This project asks the student to design an MMA plant using the BASF azeotropic distillation path that uses a total of 3 columns for separation. Here is a part of the project statement:

"BASF has recently patented a reactive azeotropic distillation process to produce esters from methacrylic acid and alcohols, involving a total of 3 columns. Although the patent example is for butyl methacrylate, they claim methyl methacrylate as well. Design a process and plant to produce 100 MM lb/yr of MMA from methacrylic acid that your plant already produces. Use the process concept that BASF introduces, with appropriate modifications (improvements) for MMA."

I was wondering if anyone could help out with any possible literature to help us with our design. We are currently trying to design the process in ChemCAD but the US patent that describes the process is general at best and we need some help. We were wondering if anyone knew of a figure or process flowsheet that depicts the unit operations and process path for this design. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time,

[mebailey]

Hi Cheme82

I have just been assigned a similar project to the one you describe below. Despite there not being any replies posted below, I wondered if you found any relevant sources of information that you could share with me?

Many thanks
Mebailey