Interfacial tension is an important thermophysical property for the operations involving multi fluid-phases such as liquid-liquid extraction. This work aims at presenting a rapid experimental method and initial interfacial tension data of 10 organic compounds and water binary systems. The organic compounds include n-butyl acetate, cyclohexanol, cyclohexanone, diethyl ether, ethyl acetate, methyl ethyl ketone, methylcyclohexane, 1-octanol, and toluene. The effect of temperature on the initial interfacial tension has also been studied. These systems are chosen to cover a wide range of interfacial tension (1-51 mN/m). Comparisons between the data sets from this work and those from the literature, whenever available, show generally very good agreement. This work also presents new data of initial interfacial tension for several ternary systems with 4 organic compounds and water with varying quantities of propionic acid (0 to 0.25 mass fraction) at ambient conditions; the organic compounds include n-butyl acetate, cyclohexanone, 1-octanol, and toluene. The results show that the impact of propionic acid concentration as solute in water is large, especially at the higher solute concentrations. The initial and final (mutually saturated phases) interfacial tensions are found in agreement for different immiscible binary systems studied in this work. The method presented may be used as a rapid way of finding interfacial tensions.

No abstract

Mass transfer performance is studied in a tall, thin, and low plate free area liquid pulsed sieve-plate extraction column. The 5.0 cm internal diameter column consists of eighty sieve plates with percent free area of only 13.5. The effects of pulsation intensity (product of amplitude and frequency) and dispersed phase velocity are studied on the extraction efficiency of the column for the acetic acid-kerosene-water system. A mass transfer correlation for the measurement of overall mass transfer coefficient is developed that best-fits the experimental data obtained in the present study. Mathematical analysis of the column is carried out that shows the insignificance of axial diffusivities in the column.