Water → Phenol

Participants

Reaction Steps

The mother liquor from the primary system contains water, acetone, impurities and residual BPA. This mother liquor is passed through preheaters into a flash chamber where the water, acetone and a portion of the phenol is flashed to a vapor. This vapor is fed to a distillation column for separating the water and acetone from the lower vapor pressure phenol. The bottoms stream from the flash chamber includes a concentration of impurities and residual BPA in a phenol carrier. From this stream, a small purge is taken to a catalytic decomposition zone where the phenol is distilled overhead and the BPA and impurities are cleaved at high temperature to form phenol and isopropenyl phenol. Phenol is recovered as raw material and recycled to the reaction zone. Uncleavable "heavies" and polymers are purged from the system as "tars." The balance of the flash pot bottoms stream is recycled to the reaction zone.

Provenance & Evidence