Rate‐based nonisothermal LLX model and its experimental validation

Abstract

AbstractMost of the current open literature handles liquid–liquid extraction (LLX) using equilibrium and/or isothermal models. However, in most industrial applications, the assumption of equilibrium and isothermal operation is not reasonable. A rate‐based nonequilibrium model for both the mass and energy transfer in LLX during the three distinct stages of drop formation—drop, fall or rise, and drop coalescence—has been developed. These three hydrodynamic phenomena affect the mass transfer between dispersed and continuous phases for which a parallel–parallel mass‐transfer resistance model has been incorporated. Because of the very large number of computations associated with repeated calculations of mass‐transfer coefficients a local model has been proposed. We have compared our rate‐based simulator with two other commercial simulators and our bench‐scale experiments have been done for toluene–acetone–water and methyl isobutyl ketone–acetic acid–water systems. Stagewise mass and energy transfer and the hydrodynamics features have been compared between the experimental and the simulation runs. Relative‐error square analysis (for the concentration profiles) shows that our simulation results are two orders of magnitude better in comparison to other commercial simulators. © 2004 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 50: 368–381, 2004