LAUSR

The separation of organic compounds using reactive extraction (combination of extractant + solvent system) has a great potential in the near future but limits its application in the extractive fermentation system because of the toxicity of solvents. Here, a study is performed for the recovery of nicotinic acid using a biocompatible system comprising a tertiary amine, tri-n-dodecylamine (TDDA), a high molecular weight modifier, oleyl alcohol, and an inert diluent, n-dodecane. At first, the effect of oleyl alcohol (modifier or active solvent) is studied at fixed TDDA concentration (0.1 v/v) with n-dodecane. Oleyl alcohol (increased from 0.06 to 0.62 w/w) enhanced the extraction efficiency significantly (from 15.46% to 67.25%). To have a control over the physical properties of the extraction system, further extraction studies are performed using TDDA (9.94 × 10–5 to 4.91 × 10–4 mol·kg–1) dissolving it in n-dodecane and oleyl alcohol mixture maintained at a ratio of 2:1 w/w, and varying nicotinic acid concent...