Liquid-Liquid Phase Equilibria in the Water – Ethanol – Cyclohexane System

In this work we determined the position of the separation boundary, measured the interfacial tension and densities of equilibrium phases in the ternary system “water-ethanol-cyclohexane” at temperatures of 277.15 K and 293.15 K. The phase equilibria for these conditions were simulated by the molecular dynamics method. It is found that molecular dynamics reproduces well the initial decrease in interfacial tension but agrees poorly with experimental data on the density and compositions of the water phase. The observed crystallization of the organic phase at 277.15 K may be useful for rapid phase separation in lipid extraction.