Industrial solvents isopropyl acetate

S20 Industrial Solvents Handbook Table 15.8 isopropyl Acetate (2)... 

Until World War 1 acetone was manufactured commercially by the dry distillation of calcium acetate from lime and pyroligneous acid (wood distillate) (9). During the war processes for acetic acid from acetylene and by fermentation supplanted the pyroligneous acid (10). In turn these methods were displaced by the process developed for the bacterial fermentation of carbohydrates (cornstarch and molasses) to acetone and alcohols (11). At one time Pubhcker Industries, Commercial Solvents, and National Distillers had combined biofermentation capacity of 22,700 metric tons of acetone per year. Biofermentation became noncompetitive around 1960 because of the economics of scale of the isopropyl alcohol dehydrogenation and cumene hydroperoxide processes. 

Commonly used water-immiscible solvents in industrial-scale processes include alcohols (isobutanol, -butanol), ketones (particularly methyl isobutyl ketone), acetates (butyl, ethyl, isopropyl), hydrocarbons (toluene, hexanes), and methylene chloride. These solvents are inexpensive, readily available, and exhibit physical properties of low viscosity and density significantly different from water. Common water-miscible solvents are the alcohols (particularly methanol). For laboratory-scale processes, the selection is greater since selection is not constrained by economics. Craig and Sogn (16) have prepared an extensive compilation of such solvents. 

Isopropyl ocetote is a wofer-whife pleosont-odored liquid with properties intermediote between ethyl and butyl acetates. It is miscible with most of the common organic solvents such os alcohols, ketones, esters, oils, hydrocarbons, etc., and it is a solvent for nitrocellulose, cellulose ocetate (of low viscosity) and a wide ronge of oils, fats, waxes, gums ond notural and synthetic resins. Like n-propyl ocetote, its solvent power for cellulose esters is increosed when lower aliphatic alcohols are added. It is largely used in the lacquer industry where its slow evaporation rate and blush resistance ore of importance. It is also used in the monufacture of plastics, artificial leather, dopes, films, cements, and in the recovery of acetic ocid from aqueous solutions. 

Acetic acid is extracted from the demethanolized pyroligneous liquors resulting from the destructive distillation of wood (20, 63, 130) and from solutions of the cellulose acetate industries (27), with ethyl ether, isopropyl ether, ethyl acetate, or a mixture of the last two as solvents, in continuous processes. 

Liquid-liquid extraction. When the two phases are liquids, where a solute or solutes are removed from one liquid phase to another liquid phase, the process is called liquid-liquid extraction. One example is extraction of acetic acid from a water solution by isopropyl ether. In the pharmaceutical industry, antibiotics in an aqueous fermentation solution are sometimes removed by extraction with an organic solvent. 

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