Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology

J Chem Technol Biotechnol 76:757763 (2001)

DOI: 10.1002/jctb.447

Separation of isopropanol from aqueous

solution by salting-out extraction
Tang Zhigang,* Zhou Rongqi and Duan Zhanting
Chemical Engineering Department, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, Peoples Republic of China

Abstract: A novel salting-out extraction process has been developed to separate isopropanol from
aqueous solution. Potassium carbonate was experimentally shown to be effective in modifying the
liquidliquid equilibrium (LLE) of an isopropanol/water/hexane system in favour of the solvent
extraction of isopropanol from an aqueous solution with hexane, particularly at suitable salt concentrations. Potassium carbonate enlarged the area of the two-phase region. This effect essentially
increased the distribution coefcient of isopropanol between hexane and water and increased the
separation factor for isopropanol vs water, which is an important consideration in designing a solvent
extraction process. The effects of potassium carbonate concentration, temperature and pH on the LLE
were studied. Finally, a f30 mm  1200 mm reciprocating plate column (RPC) was tested to separate
isopropanol from an aqueous solution. When isopropanol in an aqueous solution with composition of
isopropanol/water = 1:0.95 (wt/wt) was extracted by hexane assisted with 30% (wt%) potassium
carbonate aqueous solution, the alcoholwater ratio increased to 11:1 in the extract.
# 2001 Society of Chemical Industry

Keywords: isopropanol; salting-out effect; extraction; separation

NOTATION

Dal

D0

HS
S
X
X1
X2

INTRODUCTION

Isopropanol distribution coefcient

between hexane and the aqueous
solution, dened as the ratio of the
isopropanol concentration in the organic
phase to that in the aqueous phase
Isopropanol distribution coefcient
between hexane and the aqueous
solution, dened as the ratio of the
isopropanol concentration in the organic
phase to that in the aqueous phase with salt
Isopropanol distribution coefcient
between hexane and the aqueous
solution, dened as the ratio of the
isopropanol concentration in the organic
phase to that in the aqueous phase without
salt
Integral heat of dissolution for salt (kJ
mol 1) (Fig 4)
Separation coefcient, dened as the ratio
of the distribution coefcient of isopropanol vs
the distribution coefcient of water
Isopropanol concentration in aqueous
solution (wt%) (Fig 6)
Isopropanol concentration (wt%) (Figs 5,
7 and 8)
Water concentration (wt%) (Figs 5, 7 and
8)

Isopropanol is a basic chemical material and solvent

used in the production of many chemicals and
intermediates.1 Isopropanol is usually diluted in these
processes, so the concentration and purication of
isopropanol from dilute aqueous solutions is an important issue in isopropanol production.
Aqueous isopropanol solutions have a low azeotropic boiling point (80.3 C). The isopropanol concentration in the azeotrope is 87.4% (wt%), so there is
virtually no possibility of producing isopropanol with a
purity above 87.4% by normal distillation methods. In
industrial production, dilute aqueous isopropanol
solutions are often crudely concentrated by distillation
to increase the alcohol concentration to close to the
azeotropic composition. Then, the concentrated aqueous alcohol solution is dehydrated in an azeotropic
distillation column to obtain isopropanol with a purity
above 99.5% at the bottom (Fig 1). This conventional
process has two serious drawbacks: (1) the reux ratios
during crude concentration and dehydration are large
and (2) all the water has to be removed from the top of
the azeotropic distillation column as vapour. These
drawbacks lead to high energy consumption in the
separation process.
To overcome these drawbacks, a novel method was
developed using salting out extraction and azeotropic
distillation to separate isopropanol from aqueous

* Correspondence to: Tang Zhigang, Chemical Engineering Department, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, Peoples Republic of China
(Received 1 August 2000; revised version received 14 March 2001; accepted 19 March 2001)

# 2001 Society of Chemical Industry. J Chem Technol Biotechnol 02682575/2001/$30.00

757

T Zhigang, Z Rongqi, D Zhanting

out effect on the liquidliquid extraction (LLE) of

isopropanol/water/hexane systems. Further salting-out
extraction experiments were carried out at the optimum conditions to test the separation of isopropanol
and water.

EXPERIMENTAL
Materials and reagents
Figure 1. Isopropanol and water separation by azeotropic distillation.

solutions (Fig 2). In this coupled process, the saltingout effect helps extract the isopropanol from the
aqueous solution by acting as an extracting agent
which also serves as a dehydrating agent in the subsequent azeotropic distillation. Then the extract is
dehydrated in an azeotropic distillation tower at low
reux ratio to produce isopropanol with a purity above
99.5% at the bottom. The salting-out agent can be
refused after regeneration.
This novel method has the following advantages:
(1) The dehydrating agent acts as the extractant, so
the extraction and distillation process are coupled,
which improves the isopropanol separation.
(2) The concentration tower is not needed and the
isopropanol vaporization times are reduced, which
lowers the energy consumption.
(3) The salting-out effect of the inorganic salts
improves the extraction power of the isopropanol
extractant and the separation factor for alcohol vs
water and substantially increases the isopropanol/
water ratio in the extract. So the steam cost for the
azeotropic distillation is greatly reduced.
A major motivation for this work is to determine a
suitable salting-out agent and test the feasibility of
separating isopropanol from aqueous solutions by
salting-out extraction. Experimental and thermodynamic simulation of the salting-out effects of some
chlorides on LLE of ethanol/water and butanol/water
systems have been reported, but further investigations
on the salting-out effects of other inorganic salts for the
separation of alcohol and water are not available in the
literature.212 In this work, some common inorganic
salts were chosen to study the inuence of the salting-

Figure 2. Isopropanol and water separation by salting-out extraction

coupled with azeotropic distillation.

758

The organic solvents isopropanol and hexane and the

inorganic salts sodium chloride, potassium chloride,
calcium chloride, sodium carbonate, potassium carbonate and potassium ethanoate and other reagents
used in this work were all of analytical purity and
purchased from the Beijing Chemical Regents Shop,
Beijing, PRC.
The raw material for the industrial isopropanol was
supplied by the Jinzhou Petroleum Chemical Co,
Jinzhou, PRC.
Screening of extracting agent

A suitable extracting agent should have low solubility

in water and a high capacity for isopropanol extraction.
It should also have a strong dehydrating effect in the
subsequent azeotropic distillation so that it can serve
as both the extracting agent and the dehydrating agent.
The most common dehydrating solvents, benzene,
hexane, ethyl ethanoate and butyl ethanoate, were
tested to extract isopropanol from 50% (v%) aqueous
solution by added potassium carbonate with a solution
concentration of 1 mol dm 3 at a volume ratio 1:1:1
(extractant:isopropanol solution:salt solution). The
results indicated that the benzene and hexane had
similar salting-out effects. Although ethyl ethanoate
and butyl ethanoate had better performance, the
potassium carbonate concentration in ethyl ethanoate
was greater (above 0.5%, wt%) and the boiling point
of butyl ethanoate was higher (higher than 126 C,
1 atm). Compared with benzene, hexane has lower
toxicity and was chosen as the extracting agent.
Screening of salting-out agent

Sodium chloride, potassium chloride, calcium chloride, sodium carbonate, potassium carbonate and
potassium ethanoate were separately weighed and
dissolved in deionized water to prepare 1 mol dm 3
aqueous salt solutions. Isopropanol and deionized
water were mixed to make an aqueous alcohol solution
with a concentration of 50%(v%). Different kinds of
aqueous salt solutions, aqueous alcohol solutions and
hexane were mixed at a pre-determined volume ratio
of 1:1:1 (volume ratio) and stirred, then left to
equilibrate for 24 h. The experimental apparatus was
graduated with a minimum graduation of 0.1 cm3
which could lead to a relative deviation of less than
1%.
After equilibrium, the aqueous volume had different
volumes due to the different salting-out effects.
Different volumes of water were added to the different
solutions, stirred, then allowed to settle so that all of
J Chem Technol Biotechnol 76:757763 (2001)

Separation of isopropanol from aqueous solution

the aqueous solutions had the same volume. Thus the

salting-out effects of the different salts were compared
based on equal aqueous salt concentrations (since the
potassium carbonate concentration in the organic
phase was less than 100 ppm, the loss of potassium
carbonate in the organic phase could be ignored). The
equilibrium potassium carbonate aqueous concentration was 0.782 mol dm 3.
The equilibrium phases were carefully separated
and their compositions were analyzed. The isopropanol distribution coefcient between the hexane and the
aqueous solution was calculated as ratio of the isopropanol concentration in the organic phase to that in the
aqueous phase. The inorganic salt that provided the best
isopropanol distribution coefcient was chosen as the
salting-out agent.
The experiments were repeated at least three times
and had average deviations of less than 5%.
Factors effecting LLE

The experiments were repeated at least three times

and had average deviations of less than 2%.
Salting-out agent concentration
Potassium carbonate provided the best extraction
performance, so it was chosen as the salting-out agent.
Potassium carbonate was dissolved in deionized water
to prepare 9.7% (wt%) aqueous salt solutions. Isopropanol was mixed with deionized water at different
volume ratios, such as 0.25:1, 0.5:1, 1:1, 1.5:1, 2:1,
3:1, 4:1 etc, to prepare a series of alcohol aqueous
solutions with different isopropanol concentrations.
These isopropanol aqueous solutions were mixed with
the above salt solutions and hexane at a volume ratio
of 1:1:1 (isopropanol solution:salt solution:hexane).
After equilibrium, different volumes of deionized
water were added to the different solutions, stirred,
then allowed to settle so that all of the aqueous
solutions had the same volume. Samples were taken
from the two phases to analyze the composition. Thus
the LLE data based on equal aqueous salt concentra-

tions (since the potassium carbonate concentration in

the organic phase was less than 100 ppm, the loss of
potassium carbonate in the organic phase could be
ignored) were plotted. The equilibrium potassium
carbonate aqueous concentration was 94.50 g dm 3.
The salt solution concentrations were changed to
19.6%, 28.4% (wt%) and the above procedures were
repeated. The LLE data were obtained and plotted for
equilibrium aqueous salt concentrations of 190.1 g
dm 3 and 278.2 g dm 3.
Temperature
LLE was evaluated at different water bath temperatures from 30 C to 50 C to study the effect of temperature on the salting-out extraction. The methods
were analogous to the above procedure.
pH
HCl and NaOH were added to adjust the pH to
evaluate the effect of hydrogen ion concentration in
the aqueous solution on LLE for pH values 10.9, 12.1,
12.9. The methods were analogous to the above
procedure.

Salting-out extraction experiments

A Reciprocating Plate Column (RPC) was used for

salting-out extraction of isopropanol from aqueous
solutions (Fig 3).
The feed (isopropanol:water = 1:0.95, by weight)
was drawn from the feed container by a peristaltic
pump at a ow rate of 6.25 dm3 h 1 and injected into
the middle of the RPC (Fig 3). The salting-out agent
was drawn from the feed container by a peristaltic
pump at a ow rate of 6.25 dm3 h 1 and injected into
the top of the RPC. The extractant (isopropanol:
water:hexane = 5 :20: 75, by weight) was drawn from
the feed container by a peristaltic pump at a ow rate
of 17 dm3 h 1 and injected into the bottom of the RPC.
The outow from the top was the extract while the
outow from the bottom was the rafnate. The

Figure 3. Salting-out extraction unit with RPC.

J Chem Technol Biotechnol 76:757763 (2001)

759

T Zhigang, Z Rongqi, D Zhanting

countercurrent extraction was completed in the RPC

with the aid of the vibrations of the sieve plate.
The vibration of the plate was driven by a motor at a
vibration frequency of 100 rpm. The glass column was
30 mm in diameter and 1200 mm in height with
h1 = h2 = 600 mm. The spacing between the stainless
steel sieve plates was 50 mm with each having 50% free
area.
The experiments were repeated at least nine times
and had average deviations of less than 5%.
Analytical methods

The equilibrium phases from the LLE experiments

were carefully separated and their compositions were
analyzed with a Perkin-Elmer Autosystem X1 gas
chromatograph using a 1.8 m  3.2 mm Chromosorb
102 column and a thermal conductivity detector. The
chromatograph was linked to a personal computer
using the GS station software supplied by the BeiFen
Co. All analyses were carried out with 30 cm3 min 1 of
helium and an oven temperature of 200 C. The
system was calibrated based on the integrated peak
area of the components in 2 mm3 samples of known
compositions. The maximum average error of the
analyses was found to be within 0.1%(wt) over the
entire composition range of the mixture.
The potassium carbonate concentration in each of
the equilibrium phases was determined by titration.13
A specied amount of strontium nitrate was added to
the sample which is excessive against the potassium
carbonate. After the deposited strontium carbonate
was removed, the strontium concentration was determined by titration against EDTA with methylthymol
blue as the indicator. Thus the potassium carbonate
concentration was calculated.
Since the reaction involved in the titration is essentially an aqueous phase reaction, the sample taken
from the organic phase was mixed with a sufcient
amount of deionized water to give a homogeneous
mixture which was agitated for 2 h in a water bath at
25 C before carrying out the titration. This procedure
gave consistent and reproducible results.

isopropanol distribution coefcient dened as the

ratio of the isopropanol concentration in the organic phase
to the isopropanol concentration in the aqueous phase. D0 is
the isopropanol distribution coefcient between the
two phases without salt added.
As shown in Table 1, the isopropanol distribution
coefcient for the hexane/water system is obviously
improved by adding inorganic salt to the system. The
salting-out effect increased in the order of potassium
chloride < sodium chloride < potassium ethanoate <
calcium chloride < sodium carbonate < potassium
carbonate.
The above order may be due to the different interactions between different inorganic salt molecules and
the water molecules in the aqueous solution. Stronger
interactions between the salt molecules and water
molecules resulted in more destruction of the isopropanolwater interaction structure which forms in
aqueous solutions without salt. Thus, the isopropanol
is more easily excluded from the aqueous solutions
because of the stronger interaction of the salt with the
water, which results in a larger isopropanol distribution coefcient between the hexane and the aqueous
solution.
The heat of dissolution for salt is one of the
macroscopic parameters that reects the interaction
strength between salt molecules and water molecules.
Stronger interactions absorb more energy, while
weaker interactions absorb less energy. The saltingout strength is compared with the dissolution enthalpy
of salts14 in Fig 4, showing that the integral heat of
dissolution for the salts correlates with the salting-out
strength of the salts. In Fig 4, the abscissa represents
the isopropanol concentration in aqueous solution (x,
wt%) while the left ordinate presents the distribution

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Screening of salting-out agent

The distribution coefcients for isopropanol between

the hexane and the aqueous solution using sodium
chloride, potassium chloride, calcium chloride,
sodium carbonate, potassium carbonate and potassium ethanoate are listed in Table 1. Dal is the
Table 1. Salting-out effects of different inorganic saltsa (20 C)

Salt

Dal/D0

K2CO3

Na2CO3

CaCl2

CH3COOK

Nacl

KCl

19.23

5.55

4.73

4.5

3.86

3.54

a
Salt concentration in equilibrium aqueous solution was 0.782 mol/dm
D0 is 0.92.

760

and

Figure 4. Comparison of salting-out strength with integral heat of

dissolution for salt (Dal/D0 data were adapted from Table 1; dissolution heat
data collected from Ref 14) symbol represents heat-absorbing and
represents heat-releasing.

J Chem Technol Biotechnol 76:757763 (2001)

Separation of isopropanol from aqueous solution

(D) and the right ordinate is the separation coefcient

(S).
The salting-out effect mechanism of potassium
carbonate in an isopropanol/water/hexane system is
comparatively complex and will be analysed in a later
study.
Because the salting-out strength of potassium carbonate was the largest for the experimental conditions,
its chemical properties are stable and it is not corrosive, potassium carbonate was chosen as the saltingout agent in the following experiments.

coefcient S, which is dened as the ratio of the

distribution coefcient of isopropanol to the distribution
coefcient of water is shown on the right vertical axis of

Factors effecting LLE

The potassium carbonate concentration was less than

100 ppm in the organic phase, so the distribution of
potassium carbonate between the two phases can be
neglected, so the quaternary system isopropanol/
water/hexane/potassium carbonate has been simplied
to a ternary isopropanol/water/hexane system in the
following discussion.
Potassium carbonate concentration
The LLE of an isopropanol/water/hexane system at
different potassium carbonate concentrations is
plotted in Fig 5 for a temperature of 28 C. The twophase region area increases with increasing potassium
carbonate concentration. The extrapolated curves in
Fig 5 are `trend curves' of the experimental data at the
same conditions plotted by the graph software Microsoft Excel.
The isopropanol distribution coefcients and
separation coefcients of isopropanol vs water at
different salting-out agent concentrations in the
aqueous solutions are shown in Fig 6. The separation

Figure 5. LLE of hexane/isopropanol/aqueous solution with different

potassium carbonate concentrations at 28 C. (Note: The extrapolated
curves are trend curves plotted using Microsoft Excel of the experimental
data at the same conditions.)

J Chem Technol Biotechnol 76:757763 (2001)

Figure 6. Distribution coefficients of isopropanol and separation

coefficients of isopropanol vs water at different salt concentrations (28 C).
(a) equilibrium aqueous potassium carbonate concentration was
94.50 g dm 3; (b) equilibrium aqueous potassium carbonate concentration
was 190.1g dm 3; (c) equilibrium aqueous potassium carbonate
concentration was 278.2g dm 3.

761

T Zhigang, Z Rongqi, D Zhanting

each gure with isopropanol concentration in the

aqueous solution on the abscissa. Here, the denition
of the isopropanol distribution coefcient was the
same as in the above with the water distribution coefcient dened as the ratio of the water concentration in
the organic phase to the water concentration in the aqueous
phase.
The results in Fig 6 show that the isopropanol
distribution coefcient increased with increasing aqueous isopropanol concentrations while the separation
coefcient for isopropanol vs water decreased with
increasing aqueous isopropanol concentrations at the
same salting-out agent concentration. Moreover, the
isopropanol distribution coefcient and the separation
coefcient for alcohol vs water all obviously improved
an order of magnitude with increasing salting-out
agent concentration from 94.50 g dm 3 to 190.1 g
dm 3. Another order of magnitude increase occurred
when the salting-out agent concentration was increased from 190.1 g dm 3 to 280.2 g dm 3.
Increasing the salt concentration to more than 30%
(wt%) would further improve the salting-out effect but
the salt solution viscosity would be so high that it
would weaken the mass transfer in the extraction
column. So, 30% potassium carbonate aqueous solution was selected as the salting-out regent for the
salting-out extraction on PRC.
Temperature
The LLE of a hexane/isopropanol/30% potassium
carbonate aqueous solution system at 30 C, 40 C and
50 C are plotted in Fig 7. Increasing the temperature
decreased the two-phase region size as the salting-out
effect was weakened. The extrapolated curves in Fig 7
are `trend curves' of the experimental data at the same
conditions plotted using Microsoft Excel.

Figure 7. LLE of hexane/isopropanol/10% potassium carbonate aqueous

solution at various temperatures. (Note: The extrapolated curves are trend
curves plotted using Microsoft Excel of the experimental data at the same
conditions.)

762

pH
The LLE of a hexane/isopropanol/30% potassium
carbonate aqueous solution system at pH 10.9, 12.1
and 12.9 are plotted in Fig 8. By increasing the acidity
of the aqueous solution, CO32 is likely to change to
HCO3 which weakens the salting-out effect. If the
acidity is increased further, the HCO3 may change to
CO2. So a suitable pH is higher than 12. The decrease
in the salting-out effect with pH can also be explained
in terms of increasing isopropanol solubility with
decreasing pH. The extrapolated curves in Fig 8 are
`trend curves' of the experimental data at the same
conditions plotted using Microsoft Excel. The
mechanism for the pH effect will be studied in later
experiments.
Since potassium carbonate is a basic salt formed by a
strong base and a weak acid, the pH value of 30%
potassium carbonate is about 11. The pH could be
controlled to higher than 12 by adding a little sodium
hydroxide solution. The corrosiveness of the hydroxyl
on the equipment must be considered in industrial
processes so stainless steel would be more suitable for
full-scale production.
Salting-out extraction experiments

The salting-out extraction process was used to

separate isopropanol from industrial material supplied
by Jinzhou Petroleum Chemical Co in the experimental set-up illustrated in Fig 3.
The experimental conditions were described in the
Experimental section. The experimental results are
summarized in Table 2. After extraction the isopropanol purity was greater than 91% (wt%), which was
greater than the azeotrope isopropanol concentration
(87.4%, wt%) and the isopropanol concentration in

Figure 8. LLE of hexane/isopropanol/10% potassium carbonate aqueous

solution at various pH values. (Note: The extrapolated curves are trend
curves plotted using Microsoft Excel of the experimental data at the same
conditions.)

J Chem Technol Biotechnol 76:757763 (2001)

Separation of isopropanol from aqueous solution

Table 2. Salting-out extraction results

Run number a

Isopropanol purity in extract (wt)

Isopropanol concentration in rafnate (wt%)
a

91.8%
0.050

91.8%
0.048

91.9%
0.043

91.8%
0.049

91.9%
0.032

91.8%
0.040

91.8%
0.048

91.9%
0.048

91.8%
0.045

Note: the run number refers to repeated experiments using recycled reagents.

the rafnate was less than 0.05% (wt%). Isopropanol

with a purity of 99.5% was obtained after further
azeotropic distillation. Moreover, the separation efciency remained constant after the salting-out agents
were concentrated and reused in extraction.
CONCLUSIONS

1 Experimental results illustrated the salting-out

effect on the LLE of isopropanol/water/hexane.
Potassium carbonate had the best salting-out effect
when sodium chloride, potassium chloride, sodium
calcium, chloride carbonate, potassium carbonate
and potassium ethanoate were tested to extract
isopropanol from 50%(v%) alcohol aqueous solution.
2 Increasing the potassium carbonate concentration
intensied the salting-out effect and increased the
area of the two-phase region. The two-phase region
also enlarged with decreasing temperature and
increasing pH for the experimental conditions.
3 Isopropanol was extracted from an aqueous solution
with isopropanol/water composition = 1:0.95(wt/
wt) with hexane and 30%(wt%) potassium carbonate aqueous solution. The isopropanol extraction
performance of hexane was obviously improved
with an extraction yield of greater than 99%. The
alcohol purity was increased to more than 91%
(wt%) in the extract compared with that of 51%
(wt%) in the feedstock as the separating factor was
improved.

J Chem Technol Biotechnol 76:757763 (2001)

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