Kinetics of Reactive Extraction of Pyruvic Acid Using Tributylamine Dissolved in n-Butyl Acetate

Abstract

Abstract Studies have been made on the kinetics accompanied with mass transfer for the pyruvic acid/tributylamine (TBA)/n-butyl acetate system to investigate the effectiveness of reactive extraction for the separation of pyruvic acid from the aqueous solution. In the present work, kinetic studies, needed for the design of a recovery unit, were carried out using aqueous solution of pyruvic acid. TBA (conc. range 0.420–2.099 kmol/m3) dissolved in n-butyl acetate (conc. range 50–90%) was used as an extractant. The effect of reactant concentration, the effect of stirring speed and the effect of phase volume ratio on the extraction process were investigated. The kinetic parameters such as reaction order and rate constant were calculated. Kinetic measurements showed that the reaction is of second order occurring in the diffusion film and was found to be independent of hydrodynamic conditions. Rate constant was evaluated to be $0.419\,{{\rm{m}}^3}{\rm{mo}}{{\rm{l}}^{- 1}}{{\rm{S}}^{- 1}}$ .