Correlation of Experimental Liquid–Liquid Equilibrium Data for Ternary Systems Using NRTL and GMDH-Type Neural Network

In this work, liquid–liquid equilibrium (LLE) data for the ternary systems (water + propionic acid + solvent) were experimentally obtained at atmospheric pressure and 298.2 K. The ternary systems show type-1 behavior of LLE. Cyclopentane, cyclopentanol, 2-octanone, and dibutyl maleate were chosen as solvent and it has been noted that there are no data in the literature on these ternary systems. The consistency of the experimental tie-line data was checked using the Hand and Othmer-Tobias correlation equations. A comparison of the extracting capabilities of the solvent was made with respect to the distribution coefficients and separation factors. The correlation of the experimental tie-line data was confirmed by the NRTL thermodynamic model. A Group Method of Data Handling (GMDH)-type neural network (NN) was also used to correlate the experimental tie-lines. It is shown that the results of the both models cohere with the experimental values.