Characterization of water/organic biphasic system in liquid-liquid slug flow under hydrothermal conditions: Solvation, vorticity, and hydrophobicity

The microcapillary was combined with the liquid-liquid slug flow to build the separation field. The partition behavior of seventeen kinds of substrates was investigated by using six kinds of water/organic biphasic systems under hydrothermal conditions (25 - 190° C at 10 MPa). The scale of hydrophobicity (HF) of water/organic biphasic system was estimated. The HF value for the biphasic system used here was comparable to the conventional aqueous two-phase systems and depended on the (de)solvation of substrates by water and organic solvent. Besides, the vortex field in the slug contributed to the enhanced mass transfer of substrates. Those results are available for the selection of water/organic biphasic system as the reactive separation of target materials.