Hydrolysis Process Malonic acid can also be prepared by hydrolysing cyanoacetic acid in presence of aqueous hydrochloric acid of 5 to 37 wt%.

The reaction occurs in a reactor preferably at temperature range from 70C to 90C and pressure range from 1 bar to 7 bar according to Equation 1. The reaction may take place at stoichiometric amount of cyanoacetic acid and in hydrochloric acid. However, an excess in hydrochloric acid up to 30 percent shall increase product yield. Equation 1

Instead of malonic acid and ammonium chloride, excess hydrochloric acid, water and cyanoacetic acid also present in the reactors outlet stream. This stream is sent to a distillation column to remove excess hydrochloric acid, water and cyanoacetic acid by evaporation at absolute pressure in range between 133 bar and 400 bar, thus producing a concentrated malonic acid and ammonium chloride solution. The concentrated solution enters a solid-liquid separator where an oxygen organic solvent such as acetone is added in order to separate the desire malonic acid from ammonium chloride by-product. Malonic acid will centrifuge with the acetone added and isolated from ammonium chloride. The centrifuged suspension which contains malonic acid is passes to second distillation column where acetone is removed and once again a concentrated solution is obtained. Lastly crystallization take place preferably at temperature between 5C to 10C. The acetone recovered is recycled to separator to be reused. This mode of operation could give more than 90 percent yield of malonic acid with high purity.

Figure 1:

Process flow diagram for production of malonic acid via hydrolysis process.

Conclusion The production of malonic acid was decided to be carry out via hydrolysis process instead of oxidation process or saponification process. This is due to the simplicity of the process itself and minimal equipments required. It is also possible to achieve a product yield exceeding 90 percent with a high purity. In addition, there is no catalyst used in hydrolysis process compared to oxidation process. Another disadvantage of oxidation process is it involving many stages of reaction in which if not properly controlled it could influence the production rate. For saponification process, the raw material itself is esters of malonic acid where they are widely used in pharmaceutical industry. Hence, it is irrelevant to converting a malonic ester to malonic acid and sold it to be reconverted to it esters. Moreover, a series of distillation column is requires to produce a high purity of product and this could significantly increase the equipment cost.