How to make acetic acid more volatile so that it can be removed by vigorous aeration of an acetic acid-water mixture? I want to remove acetic acid from a mixture of acetic acid and water by aeration. The concentration of acetic acid is 200 ppm (mg/L). The pH of the water is more than 5. I want to reduce the acetic acid concentration by around 80%.
I understand that acetic acid can be removed by addition of sulphuric acid to bring down the water pH to around 2 and then boiling the mixture to separate the acetic acid.
I however the water quantity I have is very huge, so it is not practically possible to boil the water. The water temperature is more than 60 deg C. Also, I do not want to put lots of sulphuric acid in the water due to various other issues and my practical limit of using sulphuric acid is around 80-100 ppm which lowers the pH to around 3.0. I can also providing aeration to the water at 0.2-0.5 vvm.
I want to know that under these conditions, can acetic acid be removed from the water?
Is there any other other method by which we can remove acetic acid by aeration at 60 deg C, by adding not more than 100 ppm of any additive?
Is there any other chance that acetic acid would be removed by aeration at 50-70 deg C temperature? If yes how to enhance the efficiency by minimum inputs?
Aeration does not seem to be the way to go.
If there are no other ions in the water, electrolysis (Kolbe reaction) would convert the $\ce{HOAc}$ to ethane and carbon dioxide:
$$\ce{2CH3CO2^- -&gt; 2e^- + 2CO2 + H3C-CH3}$$
This process could probably be arranged to be done in a pipe with electrodes on the sides, so that the water was treated as it was used, rather than in a huge tank, where diffusion would slow down the completion of the reaction.