TURK 2025

Ethyl lactate is a biodegradable and non-toxic green compound used in various applications in the chemical industry. Ethyl lactate is known as a green solvent and is used in a wide variety of applications such as sweetener and food additive in the food industry, essence solvent in perfumery, paint and graffiti remover, cosmetics and personal care, packaging and printing ink, pharmaceutical industry, surface coating processes and electronics industry. Ethyl lactate and water are formed by the esterification reaction of ethanol and lactic acid in the presence of an acid catalyst. Ethyl lactate is a very light-yellow liquid that can be easily mixed in water. This reaction is an equilibrium reaction.

As a result of this study, Matlab optimization toolbox was used for the optimization of the simulation model created in Aspen to produce ethyl lactate that does not harm the environment with high efficiency and low cost. For this purpose, first, the production of Ethyl Lactate in the Aspen environment was modeled as a reactive distillation production system, unlike the traditional production method (including separated reactor and two or more distillation columns). In the optimization algorithm, parameters such as molar flow rates of reactants, location of feed points in reactive distillation, number of shelves, inlet temperature of reactants, column pressure, reflux ratio and boiler heating load were selected as variables. As a result, the results obtained from the optimization were compared with literature data, and it was shown that high efficiency production could be achieved with fewer stages and heat loads.