Liquid-liquid equilibrium of water, ethyl acrylate, and alkyl alcohol solvents: Extractant screening and thermodynamic analysis

Ethyl acrylate (EA) has a wide range of uses, providing convenience for industrial production and daily life. The production process often produces water by-products, so this work selects four commonly used alcohols (1-pentanol, 1-hexanol, 1-heptanol, and 1-octanol) as extractants to explore the liquid–liquid equilibrium (LLE) of water + EA + extractants. Through the analysis of partition coefficient (D), and separation factor (S), it is found that the data of all systems are>1. At the same time, the RMSD% and AAD% calculated by the regression of thermodynamic models (NRTL and UNIQUAC) are both less than 1, indicating that all four alkyl alcohols can separate EA from aqueous solutions well, and 1-octanol has the best effect. Furthermore, the consistency of the LLE data is demonstrated using MATLAB tools.