Phase equilibria and physical properties of glycerol acetates + CO2 mixtures: Conceptual design of high Pressure packed columns for biosurfactants fractionation

FORTUNATTI MONTOYA, MARIANA; HEGEL, PABLO E.; PEREDA, SELVA

Conferencia; XII Iberoamerican Conference on Phase Equilibria and Fluid Properties for Process Design; 2022

Universidad de Campinas

Renewable surfactants are valuable products for food and pharmaceutical industry which demand high purity products. Since they are low volatile and viscous compounds conventional separation technologies needs high temperature/vacuum and/or solvents, all energy intensive technologies that also harms the quality of the biosurfactants. Supercritical CO2 extraction is a low-temperature purification technology that exhibits high yields due to the favorable mass transport properties attained by the significantly reduced viscosity of a CO2-rich raffinate. The acetylation of glycerol is a reversible three-step reaction that produces a mixture of triacetin, diacetin and monoacetin. In previous works, we showed that the GCA-EOS predicts accurately the phase equilibria between CO2 and glycerol acetates mixtures. This tool and the phase equilibrium engineering of the process depicted a feasible operating window for the supercritical fractionation with CO2 at temperatures between 301 K and 323 K and pressure between 100 bar and 130 bar.