Visualization of High-Dimensional Liquid−Liquid Equilibrium Phase Diagrams

Abstract

Liquid−liquid extraction is usually used along with other separation processes for the recovery of pure components. It is desirable that the liquid−liquid equilibrium (LLE) phase behavior, which is the thermodynamic basis for liquid−liquid extraction, be represented in a phase diagram. This is because the visualization of process limitations has a crucial role in the construction of feasible separation schemes for achieving the overall separation objective. However, because most applications involve multicomponent mixtures, visualization of the LLE phase diagram in its entirety becomes difficult or even impossible. Therefore, a visualization approach to represent high-dimensional LLE phase diagrams based on projections and cuts to reduce dimensionality is proposed. In such an approach, the liquid−liquid immiscibility regions are represented as a collection of projected tie lines. By superimposing the resulting diagram with any other map of process boundaries in composition space, such as a solid−liquid eq...