Computer aided design, analysis and experimental investigation of membrane assisted batch reaction-separation systems

Membrane assisted batch reaction operation offers an interesting option for equilibrium limited reaction systems in chemical and biochemical manufacturing by selective removal of one of the products and thereby increasing the product yield. The design of such hybrid systems need to take into account the performance of each constituent element and the optimisation of the design must take into consideration their interdependency. In this paper use of a membrane, to assist in the synthesis of propyl-propionate is investigated through the use of a hybrid process design framework, which consists of a process design/analysis stage, a process implementation stage and a process verification stage. For the hybrid process design/analysis stage, a model-based methodology has been developed and integrated with the necessary computer-aided methods/tools to identify the operational window of reaction and separation functionalities and to design/analyse the hybrid scheme. The generated hybrid scheme has been validated through experiments involving an esterification reaction.