Ethyl Acrylate: Acrylic Acid and Ethanol Fed into a Sulphuric Acid Reboiler

Ethyl acrylate is the ester of acrylic acid and ethanol, used here for the acrylic paint medium. Röhm & Haas's process (Kautter and others, US 3,458,561, 1969) keeps a hot reboiler of acrylic acid with plenty of sulphuric acid and feeds acrylic acid and ethanol in continuously; ester and water distil off together and split into two layers. Their semi-works plant made 270 kg an hour at 97 % yield. The picture: our diagram.