Value-Added Esterification for the Recovery of Trifluoroacetic Acid: Batch Kinetics and Reactive Distillation Studies

The present work explores the recovery of trifluroacetic acid (TFA) by reactive distillation (RD) from dilute aqueous solutions. For this purpose, the reaction of TFA with methanol was chosen. Batch kinetic runs were initially conducted and low conversions were achieved. To improve upon this, RD runs were conducted in both batch mode and continuous mode. RD experiments showed notable recovery of the acid. Regression of batch kinetic data was also performed to obtain parameters that can be useful for further design.