What is reactive distillation?
The integration of chemical reaction with distillation in one unit is called reactive distillation. This integrated equipment offers distinct advantages over the conventional, sequential approach. Especially for equilibrium limited reactions such as esterification, conversion can be increased far beyond chemical equilibrium conversion due to the continuous removal of reaction products from the reactive zone. This leads to significant reduction of capital and investment costs and offers a sustainable development due to a lower consumption of resources.

What are the benefits of reactive distillation?
The main benefits of reactive distillation are:
- High conversions as chemical equilibrium is shifted towards completion.
- Increased speed and improved efficiency.
- Lower costs: reduced equipment use, energy use and handling
- Less waste and fewer byproducts.
- Improved product quality thanks to less degradation.

Why should you opt for a solid-catalysed process? What are the advantage of using heterogeneous
The main advantaged of using a heterogeneous (solid) catalysts over a homogeneous (liquid) catalyst are:
- No separation of the catalyst is required, as the catalyst is fixed inside the reactive column.
- No neutralization step is required, and no salt byproducts are formed.
- No catalyst-related waste - the catalyst can be completely regenerated.
- The life of the solid catalyst is typically several years.

What types of feedstocks can be used?
One of the major advantaged of this new technology is the flexibility offered in term of feed stocks processing. Various mixtures of fatty acids can be used, ranging from vegetable oil to animal fat. The alcohol of choice can be methanol, ethanol (anhydrous or not) or other C3-C8 alcohols.