ABSTRACT A model to represent the catalyzed esterification of propionic anhydride with 2-butanol has been developed and simulated. Two modes of operation i.e. batch and semi batch have been simulated and compared. The performance of both modes of operation has been compared using two performance indicators i.e. amount of conversion and process time. The effect of feed rate (semi batch) and temperature (both batch and semi batch) towards time required to achieve 97% of conversion has been carried out. Then the time required to achieve 97% conversion in semi batch operation has been optimized using Control Vector Parameterization (CVP) technique. It was observed that the highest conversion can be achieved at the lowest dynamic feed rate. For the effect of temperature, it was found that the process time of batch operation was shorter than in the semi batch if temperature is lower than 323 K, but at temperature greater than 333K, process time required by semi batch is shorter than the batch. For the optimization problem, the optimum temperature and feed rate trajectories obtained were led to shorter process time than batch operation i.e. 98 min for achieving 97% of conversion
