Liquid-liquid equilibrium and tie-line data for systems of water + acetic acid + organic solvents (chloroform, dichloromethane, and cyclohexane)

Abstract

Recent years have observed an immense significance for the separation of acetic acid from aqueous solution in the chemical industry. The work mainly examines the potential use of a suitable solvent for the recovery of acetic acid from an aqueous solution. Liquid–Liquid Equilibrium (LLE) plays an efficient and cost-effective role in the separation process. Hence, various studies have been conducted on the LLE of this system over a range of concentrations, and temperatures. The solubility and tie-line data for the ternary systems (Water + Acetic acid + Organic solvents) were determined at a temperature, T=303K. Organic solvents such as Chloroform, Dichloromethane, and Cyclohexane were used for the study. The ternary system is observed to exhibit type-2 LLE behavior. The work also focuses on the calculation of the separation factor and distribution coefficient of the organic solvents used, thereby evaluating the extracting capability of the solvents for the separation process. The reliability of the experimental tie-line data was competently confirmed using Othmer-Tobias, Hand, and Bachman correlating equations. The experimental results indicate that cyclohexane has relatively low separation factors. However, the separation factor for CHCl3 reported in this work, implies that the extraction of acetic acid by CHCl3 is possible.