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Carboxylic acids have industrial application directly or indirectly through acid
halides, esters, salts and anhydride forms and polymerization. Dicarboxylic acids
can yield two kinds of salts or esters, as they contain two carboxyl groups in one
molecule. They are used in a variety of industrial applications: Plasticizer for
polymers; biodegradable solvents and lubricants; engineering plastics; epoxy
curing agent; adhesive and powder coating; corrosion inhibitor; perfumery and
pharmaceutical and electrolyte. There are almost infinite esters obtained from
carboxylic acids. Succinic acid (or Butanedioic acid) is a dicarboxylic acid of four
carbon atoms. It occurs naturally in plant and animal tissues (Winstrom, 1978).
The IUP Journal of Chemical Engineering, Vol. III, No. 2, 18 2011
Butanedioic acid is a white powdered crystal produced as an intermediate of
the tricarboxylic acid cycle and also as one of the fermentation products of energy
metabolism (Jain et al., 1989; and Zeikus et al., 1999). The versatile properties of
butanedioic acid make it an important ingredient in the manufacture of various
specialty and commodity chemicals (Clark et al., 2008). It is purified by crystallization
in the final production step (Roberts et al., 1994; and Jiang et al., 2000). To select a
proper solvent and to design an optimized separation process, it is necessary to
know its solubility in different solvents (Mullin, 1997; and Li et al., 2001). According
to literature (Apelblat and Manzurola, 1987; Shui et al., 2005; and Lin et al., 2007),
few solubilities of butanedioic acid in pure solvents and mixtures have been
reported. In this work, the solubilities of butanedioic acid in mixtures of waterethanol
and water-1-propanol were experimentally determined using a gravimetric
method. |
