The invention relates to a method for preparing glycol from
oxalate, which mainly solves the problems of easy catalyst deactivation and low selectivity of glycol serving as a target product caused by large
temperature difference in a reactor in the prior art. The technical scheme of the invention is that:
oxalate and
hydrogen are used as raw materials, a
molar ratio of the
hydrogen to the oxalateis 40-200:1,
fatty alcohol having 1 to 4 carbon atoms is used as a
solvent, the weight ratio of the
solvent to the
oxalate in the raw materials is 0-0.9:1, and at least one of the oxalate,
hydrogen,
solvent and water is used as a
cooling medium; and the
cooling medium passes through a tube
nest in a shell and tube
fixed bed reactor at the temperature of 160 and 280 DEG C, under the pressure of between 1.0 and 6.0 MPa and under the conditions that the
weight space velocity is between 0.1 and 10 hours<-1> on the basis of the weight of a mixture of the oxalate and the solvent and the
molar ratioof the hydrogen to the oxalate is 40-200:1, a catalyst
bed is positioned outside the tube
nest, and after entering the reactor, the mixture of the raw materials and the solvent contacts a
copper-containing catalyst outside the tube
nest for reacting to form the glycol, wherein the flow direction of the
cooling medium is the same or opposite to that of the mixture of the raw materials and the solvent, and the oxalate accounts for more than or equal to 10 weight percent of the mixture. By adopting the technical scheme, the problems are solved better. The method can be used for the industrial production of the glycol.