Published July 2003
For many years, acrylic acid has been an important building block in the production of many industrial and consumer products. Because of the importance of acrylic acid, several PEP reports have evaluated processes for the production of acrylic acid and related esters. Since the last PEP update in 1987, there have been substantial process improvements, resulting in lower production costs and reduced capital investment costs for new acrylic acid and ester plants. Recent changes in the catalyst allow much higher reactor space-time yield of acrylic acid. Because of these important changes, we have updated the process to produce acrylic acid by vapor phase oxidation of propylene. We also evaluated the production of n-butyl acrylate based on a recent BASF patent. The process economics for a new grass-root acrylic acid plant and nbutylacrylate plant were evaluated and compared with earlier processes. In addition, we have summarize relevant new patents and the current state of the acrylic acid and ester industry. Because of the significant reduction in capital investment and production costs with these process improvements, this report will be of great interest to producers of acrylic acid and esters. Although this report principally addresses new grass-root acrylic acid and ester production plants, the retrofitting of existing plants with these process improvements is feasible with relatively small capital investment.
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