a: This value was obtained at 25°C.
4.2 Electric field potential
Various values of positive external electric field potential were applied to determine its effects on mass transfer and kinetics in the proposed reaction system. The conversion of acetophenone under different positive external electric field strengths, recorded at different times are shown in Figure 2. The data in this Figure are only for the acetophenone/1-butanol mixture using stainless steel electrodes. It was observed that the initial reaction rates increased with the increase of the electric potential. The conversion of acetophenone in the presence of an applied voltage of 100 V was observed to reach 44.5% after a reaction time of 2 hours, which is nearly 4 fold of the conversion attained at 15 V. However, at longer reaction times, the rate of increase was observed to decline. The decline was greater at the higher voltages. For example, after 8 h, a higher conversion was achieved at 15 V compared to the values observed at 30 V and 50 V. The total conversion at 15 V reached to 84.7% after 24 h which is about 20% higher than that at 30 V and 40% higher than that at 50 V.