Evaluation of liquid-liquid extraction process for separating acrylic acid produced from renewable sugars.

In this article, the separation and the purification of the acrylic acid produced from renewable sugars were studied using the liquid-liquid extraction process. Nonrandom two-liquids and universal quasi-chemical models and the prediction method universal quasi-chemical functional activity coefficients were used for generating liquid-liquid equilibrium diagrams for systems made up of acrylic acid, water, and solvents (diisopropyl ether, isopropyl acetate, 2-ethyl hexanol, and methyl isobutyl ketone) and the results were compared with available liquid-liquid equilibrium experimental data. Aspen Plus (Aspen Technology, Inc., version 2004.1) software was used for equilibrium and process calculations. High concentration of acrylic acid was obtained in this article using diisopropyl ether as solvent.