Liquid–liquid equilibria for systems glycerol + sardine oil + tert-alcohols

• We report LLE for glycerolysis systems of fish oil in tert-alcohols as reaction media.
• The biphasic region seems not to be reduced by increasing temperature.
• NRTL model has been used to correlate the phase behavior.
• A good agreement has been observed between calculated and experimental data.

Monoacylglycerols (MAGs) can be produced by lipase-catalyzed glycerolysis of oils and fats at atmospheric pressure and low temperature. The use of organic solvents as reaction media helps to create a homogeneous reaction system between the immiscible reactants glycerol and oil. In this work liquid–liquid equilibrium at two different temperatures (303.2 and 323.2 K) and at atmospheric pressure has been determined for two solvent-systems in the glycerolysis of fish oil (sardine oil): glycerol + sardine oil + tert-butanol and glycerol + sardine oil + tert-pentanol. From the experimental solubility (binodal) curves and tie-lines, it could be observed that the system mutual solubility does not significantly increase by increasing temperature from 303.2 to 323.2 K. The Othmer–Tobias correlation was used to analyze the consistency of the tie-line data. The experimental liquid–liquid data were correlated satisfactorily by using the NRTL model for the activity coefficient calculation.