Experimental determination of the liquid-liquid phase equilibrium as a support for studying the extraction process for diluted systems

Abstract

This proposal involves the experimental determination of liquid-liquid equilibrium data of two systems of interest (acrylic acid +water+solvents and phenol+water+solvents). The justification of the choice of these two systems is due to the fact that they are systems that are being studied in theoretical/computational level. In this case estimation of binary interaction parameters is necessary and there is a lack of experimental data reported in the open literature to be possible the comparison of these data with the calculated ones by commercial simulators that use known thermodynamic models or methods, as NRTL and UNIQUAC or UNIFAC. As they are diluted systems, the liquid-liquid extraction can be used for the desired separation, what justifies again the obtention of the experimental data. In such a way, beyond equilibrium cells, there is the necessity of equipments acquisition that allows the analysis of the phases obtained in the equilibrium cells. For each component, there is an analysis methodology to be followed. Summarily, it is needed, in the case of the acids, a potentiometric titration for the determination of the acid amount, a gaseous chromatograph (to quantify the solvent and phenol) with the respective columns and pre-columns and a Karl Fisher (to determine the water amount). Some solvents will be tested to enclose a variety of options of these, considering that the study will be made in order to work with clean solvents that are environmentally safe. It will be also tested, of unpublished form, the introduction of salt in the system, in order to verify its influence on the solubility of the systems in consideration. (AU)