BACKGROUND: Chiral solvent extraction is a potentially attractive chiral separation technique. It is essential to know the intrinsic complexation kinetics for selection, design and operation of reactive extraction equipment and for reliable scale-up. The objective of this research is to study the kinetics of biphasic recognition chiral extraction of a-cyclohexyl-mandelic acid (a-CHMA) enantiomers using a modified Lewis cell. RESULTS: The experimental results demonstrate that the extraction reaction kinetics is fast, and the reactions are first order with respect to a-CHMA and second order with respect to D-IBTA, with forward rate constants of 6.54 X 10-4 mol-2 m6 s-1 for S-a-CHMA and 6.84 X 10-4 mol-2 m6 s-1 for R-a-CHMA. With increase of HP-beta-CD concentration in aqueous phase, enantioselectivity increases, while the overall mass transfer coefficients decrease. CONCLUSIONS: Sufficient enantioselectivity and fast kinetics of extraction can be obtained in the BRCE system at HP-beta-CD concentration of 0.1 mol L-1 and D-IBTA concentration of 0.2 mol L-1. These data will be useful in the design of extraction processes. Copyright (c) 2012 Society of Chemical Industry