Journal of Chemical Engineering & Process Technology
Open Access

Abstract

Comparative Simulation of the Purification of Wet Phosphoric Acid by Tbp, Mibk and a Mixture (MIBK+TBP)

R. Hamdi and A. Hannachi

Liquid-liquid solvent extraction technology is used in several industrial processes such as petrochemical processing, pharmaceutical production, food and hydrometallurgy. It is successfully applied for the purification of Wet Phosphoric Acid (WPA) with fairly good purification performances. The purification process is basically carried out in three steps: extraction, washing and recovery, each of these steps is a liquid-liquid extraction operation. The aim was to develop a computer code that helps predicting the overall performance of the purification process for a given set of operating conditions. The adopted approach is based on determining the necessary theoretical stages for each step in the purification process using a numerical technique. Some simulation results for the WPA purification process with Tri-Butyl Phosphate (TBP) at 45°C, Methyl Isobutyl Ketone (MIBK) at 25°C and a mixture (MIBK+TBP) at 30°C are presented.