Study on the Sulfonation of Toluene with SO3 in Microreactor
1.Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian 116023, China; 2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
Abstract：In this paper, liquid-phase sulfonation of toluene with SO3 has been studied as a target reaction. For this reaction is fast and highly exothermic, microreactor bearing a high heat and mass transfer velocity has been employed to improve the reaction performance and process controllability. The effects of the process parameters for sulfonation of toluene with SO3 have been investigated in a microreactor system, such as the reaction temperature, the SO3 concentration, the molar ratio of SO3 to toluene, the liquid hourly space velocity (LHSV), the preservation time of reaction mixture, the solvent polarity, and the times of mother liquor recycling. The optimized reaction condition has been found as reaction temperature of 28 ℃, LHSV of 13 000 h-1 and several times of mother liquor recycling. Under the optimized reaction conditions, the selectivity of para-toluenesulfonic acid and meta-toluenesulfonic acid in three mono-toluenesulfonic acids have been obtained as 96.54% and 0.33%, respectively.
