Supercritical fluid extraction of 1-butanol from aqueous solutions

✍ Scribed by Antero Laitinen; Juha Kaunisto

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 152 KB
• Volume: 15
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0896-8446
• DOI: 10.1016/s0896-8446(99)00011-x

✦ Synopsis

The purpose of the present work was to study the extraction of 1-butanol from aqueous solutions using supercritical carbon dioxide at 100 bar and 40°C as a solvent. Experimental studies were performed using a 35 mm diameter mechanically agitated Oldshue-Rushton-type supercritical fluid extraction column. Over 99.7% of the initial amount of 1-butanol was removed from the feed stream when the solvent-to-feed ratio was 2.7. The lowest 1-butanol concentration in the raffinate was approximately 0.02 wt%, and the extract contained typically 85-90 wt% 1-butanol. The values of the overall mass transfer coefficient K od a were in the range 0.0019-0.0034 s-1, and the values of the height equivalent to a theoretical stage HETS ranged from 0.4 to 0.5 m. Mechanical agitation had no effect on the column efficiency at the selected extraction conditions.