Purification of phenols

A process for purifying phenols from a feedstock containing phenols, neutral oils and/or tar bases comprising the steps of

• i) subjecting the feedstock to liquid-liquid extraction using a solvent in the form of mixture of water and a solvent compound to transfer the phenols into a solvent layer, and using an organic counter-solvent to transfer the neutral oils and/or tar bases into a counter-solvent layer;
• ii) separating the solvent and counter-solvent layers, the solvent layer optionally containing some counter-solvent;
• iii) subjecting the separated solvent layer of step ii) to distillation to yield a mixture comprising recovered water, some phenols and optionally some counter-solvent as an overheads product, and a mixture comprising the solvent compound and a major portion of the phenols as a bottoms product;
• iv) settling the overheads product of step iii) to form an aqueous phase and an organic phase and separating the phases from each other;
• v) recycling the organic phase of step iv) to the liquid-liquid extraction of step i);
• and
• vi) recovering the phenols from the bottoms product of step iii) to yield a purified phenols product.

A process for purifying phenols from a feedstock containing phenols, neutral oils and/or tar bases comprising the steps of

• i) subjecting the feedstock to liquid-liquid extraction using a solvent compound to transfer the phenols into a solvent layer and using a counter-solvent to transfer the neutral oils and/or tar bases and some solvent. compound into a counter-solvent layer;
• ii) separating the solvent and counter-solvent layers, which separated counter-solvent layer contains some solvent compound;
• iii) recovering the counter-solvent from the separated counter-solvent layer to yield recovered counter-solvent as well as a mixture of solvent compound and neutral oils and/or tar bases;
• iv) separating the solvent compound from the neutral oils and/or tar bases from the mixture of solvent compound and neutral oils and/or tar bases obtained in step iii);
• and
• v) recovering phenols from the separated solvent layer of step ii) to yield a purified phenols product.