Patent ID: 8530700

Claim:
A process for the recovery of (meth)acrylic acid without the use of azeotropic solvent, the process comprising: A. Cooling a gaseous reaction mixture comprising (meth)acrylic acid, the mixture obtained from the gas-phase oxidation of at least one (meth)acrylic acid precursor; B. Dehydrating the cooled gas mixture in a dehydration column to produce a dehydration column overhead stream and a dehydration column bottoms stream wherein the dehydrating is carried out without using a solvent that forms an azeotrope with water; C. At least partially condensing the dehydration column overhead stream to form a condensate, and returning at least a portion of the condensate to the dehydration column as reflux; D. Dividing the dehydration column bottoms stream into at least first and second dehydration column bottom streams, and passing at least a portion of one of the first and second dehydration column bottoms stream to a dehydration column heater/reboiler and passing at least a portion of the other dehydration column bottoms stream to the upper half of a second column; E. Subjecting the portion of the bottoms stream passed to the second column to distillation within the second column to produce at least a second column overhead stream and a second column bottoms stream comprising heavy components; F. At least partially condensing the second column overhead stream to form a second overhead condensate, and passing at least a portion of the second overhead condensate to the dehydration column heater/reboiler; and G. Passing at least a portion of the second column bottoms stream to a second column heater/reboiler, and H. Providing one or more inhibitor solutions to one or more locations in the process, said inhibitor solutions comprising (i) one or more inhibitors selected from the group consisting of hydroquinone; phenothiazine (PTZ); soluble manganese ions; soluble copper ions; 2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-1-piperidinyloxy (TEMPO); 4-hydroxy TEMPO; and manganese acetate, and (ii) one or more liquid stream carriers consisting essentially of water, or acrylic acid, or mixtures of water and acrylic acid.