<![CDATA[Lactic acid is a platform chemical that is usually used to form various chemical products. Nowadays, the need of lactic acid is increasingly high especially for bio-based chemical as a substitute for petroleum-based one. Catalytic chemical conversion is seemingly potential to substitute the bioconversion pathway. This research aims to determine the best operating condition for separating lactic acid from its mixture (the catalytic conversion product of oil palm empty fruit bunch) by esterification-hydrolysis in order to produce the highest yield and purity. The esterification of the mixture was carried out by using n-butanol as a solvent and wet Amberlyst-15 as a catalyst. The esterification process was conducted by reacting n-butanol and lactic acid for 6 hours in a batch reactor. Hydrolysis was then followed by reacting organic phase as an esterification product and water in batch reactor system for 4 hours. The result showed that the higher reactant volume ratio, temperature, and catalyst concentration were used, the higher yield of both esterification and hydrolysis products would be. The highest esterification yield of 98.64%-w/w was achieved when the temperature was at 90oC, with a reactant volume ratio of 4, and the catalyst concentration of 2.5%-w/w. Moreover, the experiment results showed that the highest hydrolysis yield of 98.64%-w/w was achieved by the temperature of 90 oC, the reactant volume ratio of 20, and the catalyst concentration of 2.5%-w/w. It was revealed that the most significant variable for esterification was reactant volume ratio while both reactant volume ratio and temperature become the prominent variables for hydrolysis counterpart. Additionally, another modified method of separation was conducted by applying reactive distillation. This modified process increased the hydrolysis yield up to 82.34%-w/w by using pure butyl lactate as feed while the usage of the catalytic butyl lactate as feed could produce lactic acid with the yield of 74.01%-w/w.]]>
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