Patent attributes
Disclosed is a method for producing (meth)acrylic acid comprising a process of recovering (meth)acrylic acid as aqueous (meth)acrylic acid solution from a (meth)acrylic acid-containing gas mixture produced by the catalytic gas phase oxidation of at least one reactant selected from the group consisting of propane, propylene, isobutylene and (meth)acrolein, wherein the recovering process comprises the steps of: (1) feeding the (meth)acrylic acid-containing gas mixture into a quenching tower and condensing it in the quenching tower so as to recover an aqueous (meth)acrylic acid solution from the bottom of the quenching tower, in which some of the recovered aqueous (meth)acrylic acid solution is recycled to the upper portion of the quenching tower so as to condense the (meth)acrylic acid-containing gas mixture; (2) passing the uncondensed part of the (meth)acrylic acid-containing gas mixture from the top of the quenching tower to a distillation tower; and (3) heating the bottom of the distillation tower to separate water-containing impurity components from the uncondensed (meth)acrylic acid-containing gas mixture and to discharge them from the top of the distillation tower. A system used for carrying out the method is also disclosed.
