Solubility of citric acid in water, ethanol, n-propanol and in mixtures of ethanol + water

• The solubility of citric acid in water, ethanol, n-propanol and ethanol + water was systematically measured by a static analytical method.
• For ternary systems, data were correlated as function of alcohol concentration for each temperature.
• Regarding the pure solvents, both models demonstrated good agreement with the experimental data.
• It was observed that adding ethanol in the water increased citric acid solubility in all cases.

The solubility of citric acid or 3-carboxy-3-hydroxypentanedioic acid in water, ethanol, n-propanol and ethanol + water mixtures at temperatures ranging from 293.7 to 333.1 K was investigated. The experimental results obtained were correlated with the temperature for pure solvents by two equations based on the literature. For ternary systems, data were correlated as function of alcohol concentration for each temperature. Regarding the pure solvents, both of the models demonstrated good agreement with the experimental data. There are disagreements with the recent work published by Daneshfar et al. (2012) [12]. It was observed that adding ethanol in the water increased citric acid solubility in all cases.