Recovery of acetophenone during the production of phenol

摘要

A method for producing acetophenone comprising: treating one or more alkylbenzenes comprising s-butylbenzene to produce a feed comprising phenol and acetophenone; separating a crude phenol stream from the feed under crude phenol separation conditions effective to produce a crude phenol heavies; and, separating an acetophenone stream directly from the crude phenol heavies under azeotropic distillation conditions.