Esterification

Esterification

Esterification is the well-known equilibrium reaction of acids and alcohols to form esters, with varying means being applied to push the equilibrium to the product.

Esterification is one of our core technologies. We especially welcome enquiries for production of esters which require difficult separation of products and raw materials. Most of our operating units at both sites are suitable for esterification chemistry and the best unit for manufacturing your product will depend on the quantity of the esters you need and the separation technology required. This could result in either a batch process or a continuous process and we also have the ability to combine units to offer the optimum setup up for efficiency in both reaction and distillation.

The reason these are not depicted as equilibrium reactions is that the Chemoxy advantage allows us to effectively obtain quantitative yields based on our technology.

At Chemoxy, a range of catalysts can be used, including inorganic acids, organic acids, lewis acids etc. We also have the specialist equipment to efficiently remove water quickly. We also have the specialist equipment to enable the process to efficiently remove the water of reaction quickly from various process streams, be it from the top, middle or bottom of the distillation column.

An alternative can be used, that of alcoholysis of an anhydride:

Chemoxy produces esters and uses both technologies, handling raw materials such as alcohols, aliphatic and aromatic acids and anhydrides.

Chemoxy’s skill set, allows the products to be produced in high purity with low water content, often required as part of the ester specification, whether used in pharma, agrochemicals, F&F, electronics or other performance applications.

Chemoxy already makes a range of own and custom esters. Two of our own esters are 2-ethylhexyl acetate and ethyleneglycol diacetate.

Products are isolated by high resolution distillation, and thus there are benefits in the ability for us to achieve high purity and low water content, and to recycle acids and alcohols.

The involvement of our powerful distillation capabilities, in combination with our reactors, further reduces customer costs in terms of raw materials and waste disposal through recycling of key by-product streams generated during esterification or transesterification processes.

Our custom processing service combined with our in house solvent recovery business means we can also offer alternative options (and create more value) for processes which generate relatively high quantities of wet raw material as a by-product when the separation of the product from the raw material is difficult. This allows us to achieve excellent yield on difficult processes when there are regular repeat campaigns.

Our preference is for liquids, or products that melt below 50°C.

Our plant gives excellent options for efficient production of esters and with over 30 years of esterification expertise behind us, you can be assured that we will manufacture your product not only quickly and cost-effectively, but safely as well.

To learn more about continuous processing technology, visit our Batch-to-Continuous page.

If you want more information about Chemoxy’s esterification capabilities, Contact Us.