This work presents a novel reactive distillation process for the production of cyclohexanol from cyclohexene. Cyclohexanol is produced by indirect hydration of cyclohexene via formic acid cyclohexyl ester (FCE). The proposed route from cyclohexene to cyclohexanol seems advantageous in economic, ecologic and safety aspects when compared to the conventional process based on partial oxidation of cyclohexane. To be able to simulate this process, efficient algorithms to compute liquid-liquid phase splitting are needed which are developed and presented as part of this thesis. Also, a global optimization algorithm is developed and presented which was used to determine the necessary parameters for liquid-liquid and vapor-liquid phase equilibria as well as reaction kinetics from experimental data. An important part of this work are measurements performed to determine liquid-liquid and vapor-liquid phase splitting as well as reaction kinetics within the six component system cyclohexene, water, cyclohexanol, cyclohexane, formic acid and FCE. Parameters for computing activity coefficients, vapor pressures and reaction rates are also presented. The feasibility of the proposed new process comprised of two coupled reactive distillation columns is demonstrated using reactive residue curve maps. Preliminary process configurations are proposed based on the results obtained.
