Process for preparing alkyl tertiary-alkyl ether

摘要

The invention relates to a process for preparing an alkyl tertiary-alkyl ether by (a) feeding an iso-olefin reagent-containing stream and an alcohol reagent via inlet (11) to reactor (1) and allowing these reagents to react under etherification conditions to form an alkyl tertiary-alkyl ether-containing reaction mixture, (b) passing the reaction mixture produced in (a) via pipe (12) and a hydrocarbon feed stream via inlet (21) to distillation column (2), (c) fractionating the reaction mixture and hydrocarbons to obtain a stream comprising alkyl tertiary-alkyl ether at outlet (24) at the bottom of the distillation column (2) and a stream comprising alcohol and hydrocarbons at outlet (22) at the top of the distillation column (2), and (d) recycling at least part of the overhead mixture obtained at outlet (22) to the reactor (1), wherein the hydrocarbon feed stream comprises iso-olefin reagent, and wherein at least part of the iso-olefin reagent-containing stream supplied into the reactor is formed by the overhead mixture.