Solubility enhancement of biomass tar in water — Benzene, toluene and ethylbenzene as model compound

The essential purpose of this study was to improve the solubility of tar model compounds - benzene, toluene and ethylbenzene in water by using three different surfactants namely Sodium Dodecyl Benzene Sulfonate (SDBS), Sodium Deoxycholate (SDO), and Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate (ALS). The entire samples in the experiment would be designed and tested for 24 hours based on Taguchi's L
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Orthogonal Array with optimization analysis were done by using Signal-to-Noise (S/N) ratio of `Larger-Is-Better' criterion. The parameters involved include agitation speed, solvent temperature and solvent concentration at 100 rpm, 200rpm, 300 rpm, 20°C, 30°C, 40° rpm and 333 ppm, 500 ppm, 1000 ppm respectively. Based on the result, the solvent concentration (ppm) at 1000 ppm was the dominant factor that affect solubility of tar the most while the solvent temperature (°C) was ranked at second place with the optimum result being observed at temperature of 20°C. On the other hand, the agitation speed (rpm) is the least factor affecting the rate of solubility which occurred at 300 rpm. Finally, the best surfactant that exhibit an optimum performance, capable of enhancing the rate of benzene solubility is to be SDBS which has the lowest CMC value of 1.6 mM.