Enhanced simulated moving bed reactor performance for the synthesis of solketal by implementing the ModiCon strategy

The need to extend the range of potential uses for the Simulated Moving Bed Reactor (SMBR) leads the development of new operational strategies that enable the equipment to perform increasingly difficult reactions and separations. Solketal is the valorization product from the reaction between glycerol and acetone, a thermodynamic limited process that faces miscibility and selectivity issues. In this work, the ModiCon SMBR is proposed and optimized aiming to overcome the difficulties of solketal synthesis in the Conventional SMBR. The optimization is based on the "Reactive-Separation Volumes" methodology, a well-established procedure followed for optimizing numerous other SMBR processes. The results demonstrate that the new SMBR operating mode can produce solketal with a purity of 97%, reaching a productivity of over 9.69 kg(Solk) L-Ads(-1) day(-1), 38% higher than the Multifeed, another non-conventional strategy proposed in the open literature for the synthesis of solketal. The desorbent consumption is 6.76 L-Desorbent kg(Prod)(-1), 35% higher than the Multifeed. The most impressive result is the decrease in the reactants consumption of 12%. Such results demonstrate that this strategy intensifies the process even more than other non-conventional operating strategies proposed in the literature, which makes it more appealing to be implemented in the large scale solketal production.