How is benzoic acid is manufacturered? The benzoic acid production process

BENZOIC ACID PRODUCTION START-UP ASSISTANCE:
Tasks included:
* Monitoring and troubleshooting benzoic acid reactor start-up with the new catalyst addition system
* Assisting and training plant operators to control a modified arrangement of distillation columns to purify the benzoic acid product
* Executing calculations to confirm new system operating performance
* Tuning of the distillation columns control system under the new distillation arrangement.
To prepare benzoic acid, three steps are needed in this project:
The first step is acylation of benzene is carried out by the acetic anhydride. Acylation of benzene actually is a heterogeneous catalytic reaction and thus we need to use packed bed reactor (PBR) in order to carry this out reaction. The products of this process are acetophenone and acetic acid. Acetophenone act as an intermediate and will carry forward to another step while acetic acid is a by-product.
Second step is the oxidation of acetophenone by sodium hypochlorite to produce Sodium benzoate salt, sodium hydroxide and chloroform which are the by-products. This reaction is carried in a conversion reactor and the sodium benzoate salt is separated out by the hydro cyclone and again will act as an intermediate in order to produce benzoic acid in the next step.
The final step is the acidification of Sodium benzoate by sulphuric acid. The products will be main products of this project benzoic acid and sodium sulphate which is the waste disposal of this process. The reaction is carried out in a conversion reactor and benzoic acid will be separated by the hydro cyclone as liquid product from the sodium sulphate salt.