Supercritical Extraction Experiment for the Unit Operations Laboratory
Resumen
A senior-year unit operations laboratory experiment developed for the extraction of naphthalene with supercritical carbon dioxide. The experiment consists of extracting solid naphthalene from a sand bed in a fixed bed extractor and determining the mass transfer coefficient for the unit. The lab was designed to allow the students to develop their own experimental plan with little direct input from the faculty, and the outline provided for primary focus on information needed for safe and proper operation of the equipment. The experiment allows the student to apply basic thermodynamic principles to such real-world problems as the prediction of unavailable physical properties near or above the critical point. These predictions are necessary to do calculations related to scale-up and equipment performance on supercritical fluid extraction processes.