Evaluation of the Efficiency of Solvent Systems to Remove Acetic Acid Derived from Pre-pulping Extraction

Hemicellulose extract obtained by pre-pulping extraction of woodchips, is very diluted acidic in nature. The major component responsible for this weak acidity is acetic acid, present in levels up to 5~10 g/L. Here, we report an exploratory study on the extract upgrading by reactive solvent extraction of acetic acid as well as ASPEN simulation. In this study, liquid-liquid equilibria for the ternary systems (water + acetic acid + ethyl acetate) were measured at the temperature of 298.15 K and 10 (pH = 2.02), 5 (pH = 2.17), and 1 (pH = 2.48) percent of acetic acid samples were used to carry out liquid-liquid extraction studies using ethyl acetate. In a one-stage batch experiment, 96.0% of acetic acid could be extracted for the solvent when the ratio of organic-to-aqueous phases is 4:1. For simulation results, they were used to estimate the interaction parameters between each of the three compounds of the systems studied for the NRTL and UNIQUAC models. The estimated interaction parameters were successfully used to predict the equilibrium compositions by the two models.