Measurement and Thermodynamic Modeling of Ternary Liquid–Liquid Equilibrium for Extraction of 2,6-Xylenol from Aromatic Hydrocarbon Mixtures with Different Solvents
Wenyang Fan, Houchun Yan, Huiwen Huang, Yixin Ma, Jun Gao, Dongmei Xu, Yinglong Wang
Abstract
For separating the special phenolic compound 2,6-xylenol from the model coal tar, the liquid–liquid equilibrium data regarding the four mixtures (toluene + 2,6-xylenol + glycerol/ethylene glycol/1,4-butanediol/1,3-propanediol) were measured at 303.15 K under pressure 0.1 MPa. The separation performance of the selected solvents was assessed by distribution coefficient (D) and separation factor (S). The experimental and calculated results showed that glycerol and ethylene glycol were suitable solvents. Meanwhile, the reliability of the measured data was checked by the Hand and Othmer–Tobias methods. In addition, the NRTL and UNIQUAC thermodynamic models were adopted to correlate the experimental data with the calculated values of root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) and absolute average relative deviation (AARD) lower than 0.01. The consistency of the regressed binary interaction parameters was verified using a tool GUI-MATLAB.