Patent ID: 7030277

Claim:
In the process for reacting a first component alone or with a second component to produce a product comprising: (a) feeding a first material comprising a first component or said first component and a second component to a distillation column reactor; (b) concurrently: (1) contacting said first component or said first component and said second component with a fixed bed acidic cation exchange resin packing in a distillation reaction zone thereby catalytically reacting at least a portion of said first component with itself or said second component to form a product and (2) fractionating the resultant product from unreacted materials; and (c) withdrawing the product from the distillation column reactor at a point separate from the withdrawal of unreacted materials; wherein the improvement comprises concurrently with (a) and (b) in said distillation reaction column: contacting a second material comprising said first component and said product or said first component, said second component and said product with a non catalytic distillation structure in a parallel and separate distillation non reaction zone to fractionate said product from unreacted starting materials and withdrawing said product from said distillation non reaction zone.