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Conflict of Interest: In relation to this article, we declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Publication history: Received May 4, 2002
Accepted August 1, 2002

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Experimental and Theoretical Investigation of Boric Acid Production through Reactive Dissolution of Oxalic Acid Crystals in Borax Aqueous Solution

Bahman ZareNezhad^†

Chemical Engineering Dept., IUST, P.O. Box 15875-4786, Tehran, Iran

Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering, January 2003, 20(1), 44-47(4), 10.1007/BF02697183

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Abstract

Reaction of oxalic acid crystals with borax solution was experimentally investigated in a 1.5 L batch reactor at different operating conditions. The reaction was fast and took place very near to the surface of solid reactant. The dissolution process was found to be bulk diffusion controlled. A surface reaction model considering particle shrinkage was proposed for description of the process. Predicted fractional conversion of oxalic acid crystals were in good agreement with experimental values at different operating conditions. Conversion of oxalic acid crystals was significantly affected by the initial mean size of the solid reactant, while the temperature had the smallest effect. The activation energy of the dissolution process was determined as 12.89 kJ mol(-1). The proposed process can be used as an alternative way for boric acid production.

Keywords

Boric Acid Production Solid Oxalic Acid Borax Solution Reactive Dissolution Diffusion Controlled

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