Developing environmentally sustainable processes are essential to improving the quality
of life for future generations. In addition to reducing our impact on the environment, we
must design processes to be both economical and safe. A large component of any
chemical process is the solvents used to dissolve the reactants and extract the products.
The research presented here focuses on coupling efficient homogeneous reactions with
simple heterogeneous separations using propane-organic-aqueous tunable solvent
systems. Our tunable solvents undergo a phase separation upon application of propane
pressure to a fully miscible mixture of water and an organic solvent. The propane based
tunable systems detailed here eliminate carbonic acid formation and reduce productphase
contamination when compared with the equivalent CO2 based solvent systems
previously studied. Additionally, we eliminate the need to use buffers and thus solids
handling equipment is not needed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:GATECH/oai:smartech.gatech.edu:1853/29719 |
| Date | 29 June 2009 |
| Creators | Husain, Zainul Abideen |
| Publisher | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Source Sets | Georgia Tech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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