Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, Vol.97, No.12, 3138-3147, 2019
Effective separation of aromatic hydrocarbons by pyridine-based deep eutectic solvents
Many promising qualities of deep-eutectic solvents made them suitable solvents in separation process. In this work, the pyridine-based deep eutectic solvents were designed and synthesized with N-ethylpyridinium bromide and two HBDs (N-formyl morpholine and levulinic acid). Two ternary systems, benzene + cyclohexane + DES and toluene + n-heptane + DES, were studied by the liquid-liquid extraction. The effect of different HBDs, extraction time, volume ratio of DES to system solution, and the initial concentration of aromatic were studied. The DES with N-formyl morpholine showed better separation performance than that with levulinic acid. The liquid-liquid extraction equilibrium could be obtained in 10 minutes. The volume ratio of DES to system solution was set as 1:1. Both DESs showed their best separation performance at low temperatures (20 degrees C) and low aromatic concentration system. For the benzene + cyclohexane system, the distribution coefficient of benzene was 1.733 and the selectivity was 23.8 at 20 degrees C. For the toluene + n-heptane system, the distribution coefficient of toluene was 0.853 and the selectivity was 40.7. Tie-lines for two ternary systems were obtained, and the Othmer-Tobias correlation was used to check the reliability of the obtained liquid-liquid extraction experimental data. The experimental LLE data were correlated using the NRTL model and the calculated data correlated significantly with the experimental data.