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- In relation to this article, we declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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Received October 26, 2024
Revised November 16, 2024
Accepted December 18, 2024
Available online May 1, 2025
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This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0) which permits
unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Liquid-Liquid Extractive De-aromatization of Toluene from n-hexane by Using Three Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES) in Two Different T- junction Geometries
https://doi.org/10.9713/kcer.2025.63.2.105108
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Abstract
In the present study, the extractive de-aromatization of hydrocarbons (i.e., toluene in n-hexane) was investigated using different deep eutectic solvents (DESs) in a multidimensional T-junction microchannel with diameters of 0.5 mm and 1 mm, respectively. Three different DESs were synthesized using ethylene glycol, triethylene glycol, and propionic acid as hydrogen bond donors (HBD) in combination with choline chloride, methyl triphenyl phosphonium bromide (MTPB), and tetrabutylammonium bromide (TBAB) as hydrogen bond acceptors (HBA). The effects of flow rate and channel diameter variation on slug volume were studied. The percentage removal of aromatics, slug volume, specific interfacial area, and volumetric mass transfer coefficient were investigated for the three different synthesized DESs. For the slug flow, the maximum slug length was in the range of 0.96-1.53 mm in the 1 mm T-junction and 0.481.02 mm in the 0.5 mm T-junction microchannel, obtained for a corresponding flow rate of 3.0-12.0 mL/min. The maximum interfacial area was in the range of 7315-7898 m2/m3 for the 0.5 mm T-junction and 2714-3053 m2/m3 for the 1 mm T-junction channel. The extraction efficiencies in slug flow ranged from 30.82% to 74.32%. Similarly, the volumetric mass transfer coefficients (kl,a) were estimated to be in the range of 0.018 to 0.113 s1. Comparing the various results obtained during the experimentation, it was found that better performance in both T-junction microchannels was achieved by the MTPB and TEG synthesized DES with a molar ratio of 1:6.
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