Determination and correlation of Liquid-Liquid Equilibrium data for the methyl acetate-methanol -water- acetic acid quaternary system

In order to obtain the basic data for improving the hydrolysis conversion ratio of the methyl acetate in the catalytic distillation process, the LLE (Liquid-Liquid Equilibrium) data for methyl acetate-water-acetic acid ternary system and methyl acetate-methanol-water-acetic acid quaternary system were determined at 20, 30, 40 and 50°C under atmospheric pressure. Both NRTL and UNIQUAC models were adopted to correlate the liquid-liquid equilibrium data which were obtained from experimental measurement. The model parameters were estimated by the simplex method. The active coefficients in the LLE equations were calculated respectively by the NRTL and UNIQUAC models, and the calculated LLE data of methyl acetate- methanol-water-acetic acid quaternary system were compared with the experimental data. The results show that both the calculated data based on the NRTL and UNIQUAC models are in good agreement with the experimental data. The total mean absolute deviations of NRTL and UNIQUAC models are 0.00114 and 0.00133, respectively, and the mean relative deviations of them are 3.025% and 3.839%, respectively.