Separation of aromatics from aliphatics is a challenging process because of the close range of their boiling points and the formation of several combinations of azeotropes. Until now, no feasible separation process is available for aromatic concentrations below 20 wt%. In this work, we have investigated the possibility of using a selected deep eutectic solvent (DES) for the liquid-liquid extraction of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and m-xylene (BTEX) aromatics. The DES used in this work was synthesized by combining tetrabutylammonium salt and sulfolane. Equilibrium data for the ternary system consisting of BTEX aromatics, n-octane and DES were measured at 25 C and atmospheric pressure. The results showed that the used DESs have comparable distribution ratios and selectivities to those of commercial solvents.In all tested systems, sulfolane was not present in the hydrocarbon layer. It was also found that the selectivity decreases with decreasing polarity of the aromatic compound. The Non-Random Two Liquid (NRTL) model was successfully used to correlate the experimental tie-lines and to calculate the phase compositions of the ternary systems. In addition, the performance of COSMO-RS to predict the ternary tie-lines for the studied systems was evaluated and the s-profiles were used to explain the interaction between the DES and the aromatic compounds.

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This work investigates the use of deep eutectic solvents (DESs) to extract sulfur-based compounds from n-heptane as model diesel compounds. Four DESs were prepared by combining tetrabutylammonium bromide or methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide with ethylene glycol, triethylene glycol, or sulfolane. All DESs showed good ability to extract thiophene with the best extraction efficiency (35%) being observed for the sulfolane-based DES. The extraction efficiency can be further enhanced to reach 98% when five extraction cycles are performed. Moreover, the DESs were easily regenerated using rotary evaporation. In addition,1H NMR analysis is used to elucidate the extraction mechanism. Finally, the COSMO-RS model was used to predict the ternary tie lines for the studied systems and the NRTL model allowed, correlating the experimental data with an average root-mean-square deviation of <2% for all DESs. These models can be utilized for further simulation analysis of the extraction process.

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