Effect of ionic liquids on vapor liquid equilibrium of methanol + ethyl acetate

Abstract

The objective of this research work is to determine the effect of ionic liquids on the vapor liquid equilibrium behaviour of methanol and ethyl acetate binary system at atmospheric pressure. The ionic liquids used in the experiments are: 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium Chloride [EMIM][Cl], 1-ethyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium Bromide [EMPyrr][Br]. Vapour-liquid equilibrium (VLE) experiments were conducted with Othmer still experimental setup and the VLE data sets were tested for thermodynamic consistency. The average deviations of experimental results were within the experimental toleration limits and satisfied the Gibbs-Duhem equation. The results showed that the addition of ionic liquids (ILs) caused salting-out effect of methanol from the system. For the same concentrations of the ionic liquids, [EMIM][Cl] is observed to be more effective than the [EMPyrr][Br] in breaking the azeotropes and in increasing the salting effect. For the 15% concentration of [EMPyrr][Br] the azeotrope was completely disappeared.