Tracking the liquid–liquid extraction performance in mesoflow reactors

• 3 Mesoscale reactors are studied in terms of multiphase liquid–liquid mass transfer.
• In situ extraction efficiency is studied with fluorescent quenching.
• The vortex reactor is superior for intermediate energy dissipation.
• Energy dissipation and mass transfer in liquid–liquid flow is correlated.

The efficiency of liquid–liquid extraction of a 1-butanol/succinic acid/water system in a number of meso-reactors is addressed in this paper. We evaluated the extraction of succinic acid in situ by means of fluorescence measurements from segmented to dispersed flow allowing for localized extraction performance measurements in the reactor types. In addition, we evaluated the overall mass transfer rate in each reactor for similar flow rates showing the relevance of geometrical characteristics in the reactors. Furthermore, the results were correlated with the energy dissipation rate in the reactors for dispersed flow allowing for an easier scalability and performance comparison between several geometries. This correlation is fitted on two accounts, the specific interfacial area a=c6σρ-0.6ε0.4 which was verified in situ allowing for a study of the reactors in respect to the generated droplet sizes and the overall mass transfer rate (klkl) which was combined with the specific interfacial area correlation. This resulted in the correlation of klakla with the energy dissipation kl̀a≃Aε0.65kl̀a≃Aε0.65 which fitted for the characterized reactors in this paper.