Butyl acetate is an important solvent in the chemical industry.Primarily it is used in paint and coating manufacture and in the lacquer industry [1].The synthesis of n-butyl acetate by esterification of n-butanol with acetic acid has been studied in a batch mode and few studies in a continuous mode via reactive distillation (RD) have appeared in the literature [2-3].Butyl acetate has been as an internal entrainer for production system of butyl acetate.If an entrainer,such as cyclohexane,is used to break the water-alcohol azeotrope,conversion will be enhanced and subsequent separation will be easy [4].Therefore,in Entrainer-Enhanced Reactive Distillation,addition of an entrainer is to make the separation feasible by selectively increasing the relative volatility of one of the products [5].However,the use of internal entrainer,such as product in the butyl acetate system,takes reverse effects in reactive section,limits the column efficiency.In this study,we proposed adding external entrainers to the reactive distillation system to improve the column efficiency.Several entrainers,such as chloroform and benzene,were selected to enhance the performance of reactive distillation column.We provided a guide for selecting suitable entrainers and studied influence of various operating parameters,such as feed location,reboiler duty,entrainer flow rate.The use of external entrainers significantly increased the process efficiency and showed great energy savings compared with previously reported RD process.