Solid-Liquid Equilibria and Excess Molar Volumes, Refractive Indices and Deviation in Viscosity for Binary Systems of C3-C6 Carboxylic Acids

Recently, bio-butanol is being promoted as environmentally friendly sustainable energy. However, some problems are still obstacle for commercialization of bio-butanol: the development of cheap biomass and enhancement of fermentation ratio and preparation of economical separation process for fermented products. In the conventional ABE biobutanol fermentation process, organic acids with acetone, butanol, and ethanol are produced. Therefore, it is necessary to study phase equilibrium data and mixture properties for the design and operation of separation process. However, there is lack of design data for organic acids except acetic acid contained system. In this study, therefore, binary solid-liquid equilibria (SLE) and mixture properties: the excess molar volumes (V-E), molar refraction deviation (Delta R) and deviation of viscosity (Delta v) at 298.15 for C-3-C-6 organic acid were reported. The experimental SLE data were correlated with the NRTL and UNIQUAC activity coefficient model with less than 0.5 K of root mean square deviation (RMSD). In addition, V-E, Lambda R and Lambda v for the same binary systems were satisfactorily fitted using the Redlich-Kister polynomial with less than ca. 0.004 standard deviation.