Thermodynamics Research Center / ThermoML | Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data

ABSTRACT

Experimental liquid liquid equilibrium (LLE) data for the ternary chemical system of {water + phenol + (Propan-2-yl) benzene (cumene)} were presented under ambient pressure of 81.5 kPa and temperatures of (293.2, 298.2 and 308.2) K. Experiments were performed based on cloud point titration method and refractive index measurements. Results show that phenol solubility in cumene is significantly higher than in water especially at higher solute concentrations. Phenol distribution coefficient and separation factor were obtained within (1.310 to 4.840) and (63.71 to 421.69), respectively. The capability of cumene, as a solvent to extract phenol from aqueous solutions, particularly for low level phenol concentrations, was confirmed. The consistency of tie line data was sufficiently assessed by the Othmer-Tobias and Bachman equations. Meanwhile, the well-known NRTL and UNIQUAC thermodynamic models were employed to reproduce the experimental data and obtaining the binary interaction parameters. The corresponding low value root-mean-square deviations confirm the good agreement between experimental data and the models correlated values.