Abstract—Nicotinic acid (3-pyridine carboxylic acid) widely used in food, pharmaceutical and biochemical industries is an important chemical. Due to ecological problems and complicate the synthesis methods, the chemical route for nicotinic acid production will become unattractive in the future. The aim of the present work is to study the reactive extraction of nicotinic acid from aqueous solutions using TOA dissolved in MIBK to intensify nicotinic acid production via enzymatic route. The extraction efficiency is determined in terms of distribution coefficient (
KD ), degrees of extraction (
E ) and loading ratios (
Z). The effects of initial a
cid concentration and composition of extractant (TOA) are determined. The maximum value of
KD is found to be 5.8 with TOA (0.57 mol/L) at an acid concentration of 0.12 mol/L. The mathematical model, based on mass action law, is proposed to estimate the values of equilibrium constants (
KE) and number of reacting acid molecules per extractant molecules in chemical extraction. Population based search algorithm, differential evolution (
DE) as an optimization algorithm is used to determine the equilibrium extraction constants (
KE) and the stoichiometry of reactive extraction through a proposed equilibrium model. The model predicted values of
KE are showing good correlation with
R2 > 0.98 and maximum value of
SD = 0.092.
Index Terms—Differential evolution, equilibrium study, nicotinic acid, reactive extraction.
Sushil Kumar is with the Department of Chemical Engineering, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT), Allahabad – 211 004 (UP), India (e-mail: sushilk@mnnit.ac.in).
Suantak Kamsonlian was with the Department of Chemical Engineering, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology (MNNIT), Allahabad – 211 004 (UP), India.
Neha Chomal is with the Department of Chemical Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani – 333 031, India.
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Cite: Sushil Kumar, Suantak Kamsonlian, and Neha Chomal, "Equilibrium Study on Reactive Extraction of Nicotinic Acid from Aqueous Solution," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 506-510, 2014.