Unsteady Mass Transfer Around Single Droplet Accompanied by Interfacial Extraction Reaction of Succinic Acid

The transient mass transfer in a single droplet system consisting of 1-octanol (continuous phase)/aqueous succinic acid solution (dispersed phase) was investigated in the presence of chemical reaction, which is acid/anion exchange reaction of succinic acid and tri-n-octylamine (TOA). This succinic acid extraction by TOA can be considered to occur at the interface between organic and aqueous phase, that is, heterogeneous reaction system. The basic properties of the system such as viscosity, density, distribution coefficient, terminal velocity of droplet, and diffusion coefficient were measured experimentally or calculated theoretically, and used for theoretical calculation of characteristic parameters of mass transfer later. The effects of succinic acid concentration on the terminal velocity was negligible in the existence of TOA, although the terminal velocity increases with succinic acid concentration in the absence of TOA. On the contrary, the terminal velocity decreases with TOA concentration. While droplets falls through organic phase, the trajectory of droplets is observed to oscillate around its vertical path. A mass trnasfer cell was prepared to monitor the mass transfer behavior in a single droplet and used to measure the mean concentration of succinic acid inside droplet. The results are expressed with dimensionless parameters. Under 50 g/L succinic acid condition, the system with 0.1 mol/kg TOA showed that the molar flux decreases in proportion to the decrease of concentration gradient, while in the case of 0.5 mol/kg TOA Sh increases rapidly with time indicating the molar flux of succinic acid decreases relatively slowly compared to the decrease in concentration gradient.