The presence of salts can significantly alter the (liquid + liquid) equilibrium and extraction process. In this work, a study was conducted on the (liquid + liquid) equilibria of (water + acetic acid + toluene + sodium chloride or potassium chloride) at temperatures (288.2, 298.2 and 313.2) K. This chemical system, irrespective of salt, is frequently used in (liquid + liquid) extraction investigations. The selected salt concentrations in initial aqueous solutions were (0.9 and 1.7) mol . L-1. The results show that salting-out effect of the salts was significant, so that an enhancement in the acetic acid distribution coefficient was achieved within (15.6 to 66.8)% with NaCl and within (2.5 to 37.6)% with KCl. Meantime, high separation factors were found at low temperatures and low solute concentrations. The electrolyte-NRTL model was satisfactorily used to correlate the phase equilibria. In this regard for each salt, the temperature dependent binary interaction parameters between components were calculated. The predicted tie-line mole fractions give root-mean square deviation (RMSD) values of only 0.0038 and 0.0045 for the systems containing NaCl and KCl, respectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.