Abstract
Biomass is an attractive target in process development for the emerging renewable resources based bio-refinery industry. Due to the ample range of application of acrylic acid, its production through bio-route received more awareness in scientific fraternity. In this view, an attempted was made to study the reactive extraction of acrylic acid with aliquat 336 in rice bran oil. Moreover, Box-Behnken matrix was employed to corroborate the effects of process variables viz. concentration of acrylic acid [CAA]aq, concentration of aliquat 336 [CR4N+Cl], and temperature on the extraction efficiency (η%). In physical extraction, average extraction efficiency was found in the order as: 43.55 > 35.36 > 29.14 at 303 K, 323 K, and 343 K respectively in rice bran oil. The correlation coefficient, R2 = 0.988 % indicates the appropriateness of proposed model to predict the extraction efficiency in terms of independent variables, and the predicted values were found in close agreement with that of experimental results. Further, R2(Pred) = 0.806 is in reasonable agreement with the R2(Adj) = 0.972. The optimum conditions for extraction of acrylic acid using aliquat 336 as an extractant in rice bran oil are [CAA]aq = 0.0.5 (mol/kg); [CR4N+Cl] = 1.98 (mol/kg); temperature = 323 K and the model predicted extraction efficiency 77.5 % was found to be an excellent fit with the experimental value 75 %. Further, number of theoretical stages was found to be 3 and S/F ratio 0.247.
