Liquid-liquid equilibria of the ternary system thiophene + octane + dimethyl sulfoxide at several temperatures

Liquid-liquid equilibria (LLE) data of the ternary system thiophene + octane + dimethyl sulfoxide at 40 degrees C, 50 degrees C, and 60 degrees C under atmospheric pressure were determined using an equilibrium cell with the standard curve method. The distribution of thiophene between extract and raffinate was measured and a practical formula of equilibria data for industrial extraction was proposed. NRTL model and UNIQUAC model were used to correlate and calculate LLE data of the system, and model parameters were determined using the simplex optimization method and imitative Newton method with a minimized objective function of mole fraction deviation. The rule of thermodynamic equilibria was used to deal with multi-roots problem in correlating process. Agreement between predicted and experimental data was satisfactory. The average absolute deviations of the NRTL and UNIQUAC models of thiophene mass fraction were 0.0040 and 0.0078, respectively. Both NRTL and UNIQUAC models were suitable for the calculation of LLE data of the ternary system thiophene + octane + dimethyl sulfoxide. The correlation accuracy of NRTL model is inferior to that of UNIQUAC model.