Patent ID: 7189872

Claim:
A process for producing (meth)acrylic acid, which comprises purifying a (meth)acrylic acid-containing material to be purified, wherein said purifying comprises distilling said (meth)acrylic acid containing material in a distillation column, wherein during a cut operation in which a production rate of (meth)acrylic acid is reduced by α% relative to a production rate of (meth)acrylic acid prior to said cut operation, a liquid/gas flow rate in the distillation column is adjusted to be at least (100−α/2)% of the liquid gas flow rate prior to said cut operation, wherein a fluctuation margin of a heat load on a reboiler of the distillation column prior to said cut operation is a fluctuation margin such that proportions X B and X A of the differences between an average value R 5 of a heat load during optional 5 minutes and an average value R B of a heat load during one hour before the 5 minutes and between R 5 and an average value R A of a heat load for one hour after the 5 minutes, as calculated by the following formulae, are at most 10%: X B =(| R B −R 5 |/R B )×100 X A =(| R A −R 5 |/R A )×100.