Recovery of Anthracene from Coal Tar by Solvent Extraction

A method of anthracene purification by extraction of impurities with a methanol-benzene solvent mixture is proposed. In the first stage the anthracene cake is dissolved in the solvent mixture at the boiling temperature of the system. Subsequently the precipitation of the great part of anthracene takes place by cooling the system to room temperature. The solid phase is removed by filtration while the liquid phase is arranged in the last stage by stripping. After this operation the solvent can be reused in the anthracene recovery process. In this paper the results obtained on the recovery of anthracene from anthracene cake are reported. The influence of solvent mixture composition, solvent mixture volume/anthracene cake weight ratio, and operation time are studied. According to the experimental results, 90% of the anthracene from the anthracene cake can be recovered. The anthracene purity attained is close to 90%.