Facile recovery of acetic acid from waste acids of electronic industry via a partial neutralization pretreatment (PNP) – Distillation strategy

• Novel PNP-distillation strategy was put forward in recovery of HAc from waste acid.
• Pure HAc with a recovery rate of 94.3% was obtained under optimal condition.
• This strategy has the merits of being simple, reproducible, and easy to scale-up.

In recent years, attention on treatment of industrial waste acids has been increasing considerably due to enforcement of the environmental regulations as well as economical considerations about the waste acids. In this paper, a novel approach for recovery of acetic acid (HAc) from electronic industrial waste acids, containing about 58 wt.% of HAc, 39 wt.% of nitric acid (HNO3), 3 wt.% of phosphoric acid (H3PO4), and small amount of hydrochloride acid (HCl) and hydrofluoride acid (HF), was developed using partial neutralization pretreatment (PNP)-distillation strategy. The effects of distillation time, types of alkali for neutralization and oil bath temperature on recovery of HAc were systematically studied. It was found that HAc can be efficiently recovered from the waste acids with a yield of 94.3% (purity 99.4%) under optimal conditions. The treatment scheme for HAc recovery from waste acids is featured by feasibility, reproducibility and massive productivity.

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