The chemical industry is nowadays predominantly using fossil rawmaterials

but the alternative use of bio-based resources is investigated to account for the foreseeable scarcity of fossil feedstocks. Amain challenge of using biobased feedstocks is the complexity of the impurity profile. For an economic production of bio-based chemicals

the use of intensified processes is inevitable and approaches are needed for the various process intensification techniques to identify their applicability to be used for the production of bio-based components. In the presented study

an approach is shown for the reactive distillation (RD) technology to identify the most critical bio-based impurities and their impact on the reactive distillation process. The investigated case-study is the production of n-butyl acrylate from acrylic acid and n-butanol. Among all initially identified impurities

the key impurities

having the biggest impact on the product purity in the reactive distillation process

are found. These impurities are then studied in more detail and an operating window depending on the impurity concentration is identified for the reactive distillation column. Furthermore

an integrated design of upstreamand downstreamprocesses is facilitated

as the presented results can be used in the development of the fermentation processes for the production of the bio-based reactants by decreasing the concentration of the critical impurities.