Industrial solvent extraction plant

In a similar appHcation, Cape Industries has announced its intention to commission a solvent extraction plant to recover acetic acid from an effluent generated at its dimethyl terephthalate [120-61-6] faciHty (Wilmington, North Carolina) (44,45). The plant was commissioned in Eebmary 1995. In this case, the solvent will be CYANEX 923 extractant [100786-00-3], CYANEX 923 is also a phosphine oxide, but unlike TOPO is a Hquid and can be used without a diluent (46,47). This has the benefit of reducing plant size, capital, and operating costs. 

Introduction of the expander has enabled extraction plants to handle additional seed species, with the purchase of only minimal dehulling equipment where needed. Prepress-solvent-extraction facilities are rapidly being replaced by expander-direct solvent extraction processes, leaving two basic extraction processes in the modern oilseed industry— expander-direct solvent extraction, and hard press for applications where seed supplies are limited or other considerations do not warrant the construction of solvent extraction plants... 

Natural Products. Various methods have been and continue to be employed to obtain useful materials from various parts of plants. Essences from plants are obtained by distillation (often with steam), direct expression (pressing), collection of exudates, enfleurage (extraction with fats or oils), and solvent extraction. Solvents used include typical chemical solvents such as alcohols and hydrocarbons. Liquid (supercritical) carbon dioxide has come into commercial use in the 1990s as an extractant to produce perfume materials. The principal forms of natural perfume ingredients are defined as follows the methods used to prepare them are described in somewhat general terms because they vary for each product and suppHer. This is a part of the industry that is governed as much by art as by science. 

The Pott-Broche process (101) was best known as an early industrial use of solvent extraction of coal but was ended owing to war damage. The coal was extracted at about 400°C for 1—1.5 h under a hydrogen pressure of 10—15 MPa (100—150 atm) using a coal-derived solvent. Plant capacity was only 5 t/h with an 80% yield of extract. The product contained less than 0.05% mineral matter and had limited use, mainly in electrodes. 

Plant carotenoids are still extracted at laboratory and industrial scales with solvent mixtnres of ethanol and ethyl acetate, bnt solvent extraction always bears the risk of toxic residnes in the extracts and this limits their use in large production applications in the food and pharmaceutical industries. 

Common to all or most solvent extraction operations in the mining industry is the problem of stable formation of cruds. The crud can constitute a major solvent loss to a circuit and thereby adversely alfect the operating costs. Because there can be many causes of crud formation, each plant may have a crud problem unique to that operation. Factors such as ore type, solution composition, solvent composition, presence of other organic constituents, design and type of agitation all can adversely alfect the chemical and physical operation of the solvent extraction circuit and result in crud formation [32-34]. 

All the novel separation techniques discussed in this chapter offer some advantages over conventional solvent extraction for particular types of feed, such as dilute solutions and the separation of biomolecules. Some of them, such as the emulsion liquid membrane and nondispersive solvent extraction, have been investigated at pilot plant scale and have shown good potential for industrial application. However, despite their advantages, many industries are slow to take up novel approaches to solvent extraction unless substantial economic advantages can be gained. Nevertheless, in the future it is probable that some of these techniques will be taken up at full scale in industry. 

The use of solvent extraction as a unit process operation is common in the pesticide industry however, it is not widely practised for removing pollutants from waste effluents. Solvent extraction is most effectively applied to segregated process streams as a roughing treatment for removing priority pollutants such as phenols, cyanide, and volatile aromatics [7]. One pesticide plant used a full-scale solvent extraction process for removing 2,4-D from pesticide process wastewaters. As a result, 2,4-D was reduced by 98.9%, from 6710 mg/L to 74.3 mg/L. 

Decontamination of soils using supercritical fluids is an attractive process compared to extraction with liquid solvents because no toxic residue is left in the remediated soil and, in contrast to thermal desorption, the soils are not burned. In particular, typical industrial wastes such as PAHs, PCBs, and fuels can be removed easily [7 to 21]. The main applications are in preparation for analytical purposes, where supercritical fluid extraction acts as a concentration step which is much faster and cheaper than solvent-extraction. The main parameters for successful extraction are the water content of the soil, the type of soil, and the contaminating substances, the available particle-size distribution, and the content of plant material, which can act as adsorbent material and therefore prolong the extraction time. For industrial regeneration, further the amount of soil to be treated has to taken into account, because there exists, so far, no possibility of continuous input and output of solid material for high pressure extraction plants, so that the process has to be run discontinuously. 

Volatile or essential oils are usually obtained from the appropriate plant material by steam distillation, though if certain components are unstable at these temperatures, other less harsh techniques such as expression or solvent extraction may be employed. These oils, which typically contain a complex mixture of low boiling components, are widely used in flavouring, perfumery, and aromatherapy. Only a small number of oils have useful therapeutic properties, e.g. clove and dill, though a wide range of oils is now exploited for aromatherapy. Most of those employed in medicines are simply added for flavouring purposes. Some of the materials are commercially important as sources of chemicals used industrially, e.g. turpentine. 

Alonso, A.I., Galan, B., Gonzalez, M. and Ortiz, I. (1999) Experimental and theoretical analysis of a nondispersive solvent extraction pilot plant for the removal of Cr(VI) from a galvanic process wastewaters. Industrial Engineering Chemistry Research, 38, 1666. 

Higher-purity industrial and food-grade phosphates, until recently, were most often derived from furnace processes. New plants recover purified phosphoric acid suitable for food-grade uses from relatively impure wet process acid, using solvent extraction technology. 

As reported in a lot of reviews, extractions with supercritical solvents have a very promising commercial potential. Until now the commercialization is mainly restricted to batchwise extraction of solids with carbon dioxide (e g. decaffeination of coffee and tea, extraction of hop). Laboratory experiments and operation of small-scale pilot plants gave favourable economic values for continuous extraction of liquids with C02 and other gases. Only a few extractions with C02 or C HS are performed already on a small industrial scale. For research purposes and product development a new high pressure counter-current extraction plant was erected. To get greater amounts of product the explosionproof plant was constructed in pilot scale using a special modular concept and an effective visual control system. 

Safflower seed oil content can also be determined by the use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and today most plant breeders employ NMR techniques to measure their new lines. NMR techniques can be performed on only one half of a seed, so the other half can be planted if the results of the analysis are promising. In its earlier versions, processors tended to feel that NMR analysis produced oil content results that were slightly higher than found by standard solvent extraction analysis or than what was actually obtained at the oil mill. This has been disproven in the case of safflower seed, and the industry has adopted NMR analyses in large part to speed up paperwork. Because of the relatively small amount of safflower seed being measured for oil content annually, no one has taken the time to prove that present-day NMR procedures should be used to substitute for the standard AOCS procedure. 

Provitamin D2. Ergosterol is isolated exclusively from plant sources. The commercial product is ca 90—100% pure and often contains up to 5 wt % of 5,6-dihydroergosterol. Usually, the isolation of provitamin D2 from natural sources iavolves the isolation of the total sterol content, followed by the separation of the provitamin from the other sterols. The isolation of the sterol fraction iavolves extraction of the total fat component, its saponification, and then reextraction of the unsaponifiable portion with an ether. The sterols are ia the unsaponiftable portion. Another method is the saponification of the total material, followed by isolation of the nonsap onifiable fraction. Separation of the sterols from the unsap onifiable fraction is done by crystallization from a suitable solvent, eg, acetone or alcohol. Ethylene dichloride, alone or mixed with methanol, has been used commercially for recrystallization. In the case of yeasts, it is particularly difficult to remove the ergosterol by simple extraction, thereby obtainiag only ca 25% recovery. Industrially, therefore, the ergosterol is obtaiaed by preliminary digestion with hot alkaUes or with amiaes (28—33). Variations of the isolation procedure have been developed. Eor example, after saponification, the fatty acids may be precipitated as calcium salts, which tend to absorb the sterols. The latter are then recovered from the dried precipitate by solvent extraction. 

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