Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.44, No.23, 8837-8851, 2005
On the influence of some inorganic salts on the partitioning of citric acid between water and organic solutions of tri-n-octylamine. Part II: Toluene as organic solvent
Reactive extraction is a suitable process for the recovery/purification of ionic species (e.g., heavy metals) and electrolytes (e.g., carboxylic acids) from aqueous solutions. The computer-aided basic design of such processes requires a thermodynamic model for the liquid-liquid equilibrium of multicomponent systems, for example, of the system (water + carboxylic acids + organic solvent + reactive extractant). However, as even very small amounts of a strong electrolyte (e.g., sodium chloride) can considerably reduce the amount of carboxylic acid extracted from the aqueous into the organic phase, such models should also be able to account for such effects as was demonstrated in Part I of this series, which dealt with the influence of sodium nitrate, sodium chloride, sodium sulfate, sodium citrate, and hydrochloric acid on the partitioning of citric acid to the coexisting aqueous/organic liquid phases of the system (water + methyl isobutyl ketone (organic solvent) + tri-n-octylamine (chemical extractant)) at 25 degrees C. In the present work, the organic solvent (methyl isobutyl ketone) is replaced by toluene. New experimental results for the influence of the mentioned strong electrolytes on the partitioning of citric acid to the coexisting aqueous/organic liquid phases are reported and successfully modeled/predicted by applying the previously developed thermodynamic framework.