Measurement and Correlation of Liquid-Liquid Equilibrium Data for the Water plus Cyclohexanone plus Methyl Isobutyl Ketone Ternary System

Fundamental data of liquid-liquid equilibria (LLE) are important in the design and development of extraction processes. In order to obtain such data for the extraction of cyclohexanone from wastewater using methyl isobutyl ketone (MIBK) as a solvent, the MIBK-cyclohexanone-water ternary system was studied at 303.15, 313.15, and 323.15 K under atmospheric pressure. The distribution coefficient and separation factors for this system were calculated and it was found that all separation factors were much larger than one, which demonstrated the feasibility of using MIBK as a solvent to treat the cyclohexanone-containing wastewater. Additionally, the Hand and Bachman equations were both used to check the reliability and consistency of the obtained experimental data. The squares of the linear correlation coefficients were determined to be greater than 0.99, indicating excellent agreement. The NRTL and the UNIQUAC activity coefficient models were also employed to correlate the experimental results obtained for this ternary system. The root mean square deviation (RMSD) values of the two models were evaluated to be less than 0.50%. Furthermore, the binary interaction parameters of the ternary system were also obtained.