Experimental data and modeling of salt effect on liquid-liquid equilibrium of the ternary (water + 1-propanol + hexane) system at 298K

The effect of NaCl on the LLE data for the ternary system, water + 1-propanol + hexane, were determined at 298 K under atmospheric pressure. The curve of solubility and tie-line data of this system were determined by experimental analysis. The experimental results showed that addition of NaCl significantly affected the two-phase region of ternary system, the enlargement of two-phase region occurred with an increase of salt concentration in initial aqueous phase. Distribution coefficients and separation factors were also calculated and compared at different NaCl concentrations. In addition, the experimental tie-line data were correlated with the NRTL model. Also, parameters of this model were estimated with five nature-inspired metaheuristic solvers. These algorithms are Genetic algorithms (GA), Monkey- Krill Herd Hybrid (MAKHA), Intelligent Firefly Algorithm (IFA), Cuckoo Search (CS) and Harmony search algorithm (HAS). Capabilities and limitations of these solvers have been analyzed. Results showed that all algorithms outperformed, in particular, MAKHA give the best efficiency-reliability for the prediction of LLE.