The process of producing high viscosity polyester by transesterification polycondensation needs to adjust the operating conditions and equipment structure of pre-polycondensation kettle and final polycondensation kettle to realize process intensification. In view of this, the fluid volume function (VOF) method of CFD was used to investigate the film formation and surface renewal characteristics of horizontal polycondensation kettle under different operating conditions, including viscosity, rotating speed and liquid height. The results show that the viscosity and rotating speed were positively correlated with the film area and surface renewal in the pre-polycondensation stage. However, increasing the viscosity by several orders of magnitude in the final polycondensation kettle, the larger the film area and film thickness, but the overall surface renewal of the disk decreased. Therefore, a hexagonal hole disk is designed. It is found that the film is more uniform and the power consumption can be reduced by more than 20 %.

Production of the commercial chemical of propylene carbonate (PC) via cycloaddition of the sequestered carbon dioxide would dramatically reduce the carbon footprint. However, industrially conventional CO2 catalytic conversion processes suffer from energy-intensive and lengthy purification operations. Herein, we report the catalytic membrane reactor (CMR) that integrates catalytic reaction and pervaporation functions into a single unit, where the products were transferred in situ to the permeate side. The morphology, structure and ingredients of the composite three-layer structure were characterized by SEM, EDS and XRD, and the effects of ionic liquid loading, temperature and propylene oxide (PO) flow rate on PO conversion and PO flux in CMR were evaluated in detail. Under optimized conditions, the PO conversion and PC selectivity of the continuous process were both close to 100%, with suitable PO flux of 16.506 mol/m2·h. This work offers a feasible process for developing an ionic liquid membrane reactor to produce PC.