Hydrolysis of Methylal Catalyzed by Ion Exchange Resins in Aqueous Media

Abstract

In the present work, the chemical equilibrium and kinetics of methylal (PODE₁) hydrolysis catalyzed by ion–exchange resin in aqueous solutions were investigated. The study covers temperatures between 333.15 and 363.15 K at various starting compositions covering (PODE₁ + MeOH)/water molar ratio ranges from 0.5 to 1.5 in a time scale. On the basis of the experimental results, a mole fraction-based model of the chemical equilibrium and a pseudohomogeneous model are proposed to fit data based on true amount of monomeric formaldehyde. It has been demonstrated that the hydrolysis of PODE1 is slightly endothermic with the enthalpy 8.19 kJ/mol and the rate determining step. Finally, a feed–forward artificial neural networks (ANN) model is developed to model the concentration change of methanol in aqueous solutions. The results showed that the predicted data from designed ANN model were in good agreement with the experimental data with the coefficient (R²) of 0.98. Designed ANN provides a reliable method for modeling the hydrolysis reaction of methylal (PODE1).