Enhancement of Solubility and Mass Transfer Coefficient of Benzoic Acid Through Hydrotropy

The effect of hydrotropes such as sodium salicylate, sodium benzoate, and nicotinamide on the solubility and mass transfer coefficient of benzoic acid has been investigated. The solubility studies were carried out under a wide range of hydrotrope concentrations (0 to 3.0 mol/L) and different system temperatures (303K to 333K). It has been observed that the solubility and mass transfer coefficient of benzoic acid increases with an increase in hydrotrope concentration and also with system temperature. A Minimum Hydrotrope Concentration (MHC) was found essential to initiate a significant increase in the solubility and the mass transfer coefficient. The maximum enhancement factor (?s), which is the ratio of the solubility value in the presence and absence of a hydrotrope, has been determined for all sets of experimentations. The solubility of benzoic acid has been enhanced to 19.98 times in the presence of 2.5 mol/L concentration of sodium salicylate hydrotrope at 333K.The effectiveness of hydrotropes was measured in terms of Setschenow constant Ks and the highest value has been observed as 0.502 for sodium salicylate.