METHOD OF PRODUCING DIMETHYL ETHER BY SINGLE-STEP SYNTHESIS AND SEPARATION THEREOF Russian patent published in 2014 - IPC C07C43/04 C07C41/01 C07C41/09 

FIELD: chemistry.

SUBSTANCE: method includes feeding synthesis gas, conducting a reaction in an adiabatic-type reactor at high temperature and pressure in the presence of a bifunctional catalyst, cooling and separating the obtained contact gases into a gaseous and a liquid phase with separation of dimethyl ether from the gaseous phase by absorption with methanol to obtain an absorbent saturated with carbon (IV) oxide and dimethyl ether, and methanol from the liquid phase by fractionation. Synthesis is carried out in a multistep reactor in the presence of a bifunctional catalyst of two types, one of which has higher activity with respect to methanol synthesis - type 1, and the other has a higher activity with respect to methanol dehydration - type 2; before feeding into the reactor, the synthesis gas is mixed with recycling gases, a portion of the obtained mixture is heated to 255-265°C, methanol separated from the liquid phase is injected into said mixture and the mixture is then fed to the first step of the reactor, the other portion is cooled and fed in form of quenching gases to each subsequent reactor step into the main gas stream in an amount which provides gas temperature at entry into the catalyst bed located at said steps of 240-250°C; the entire gaseous phase stream after separation is fed for absorption of dimethyl ether, and the obtained saturated absorbent is fed for screening carbon (IV) oxide to obtain a mixture of dimethyl ether and methanol, which is subjected to fractionation to obtain a distillate - dimethyl ether with impurity content of 3.0-10.0 wt % and a bottom residue - methanol, which is fed for absorption again.

EFFECT: method enables to obtain an end product with high output and selectivity using a simple method.

6 cl, 1 dwg, 6 tbl, 5 ex