Time,

Thats why I suggest to allow it to age overnight or more. It appears to do nothing at first but after a few hours it will start to slush up and once it gets going the Acetic acid starts to act like a solvent and helps it along. A nice warm spot does not hurt at all. I will run a time test to see how long it really takes. Keep in mind doing it this way water really isn't that bad compaired to other methods that distill. The water is removed from the DCM using MgSO₄ in the end anyway and the only thing it really affects is the equilibrium meaning yeilds could be lower. Its not lost however and one could just distill the remaining slop to get a more dilute AcOH. This could be reprocessed with more salt and another extraction if one really desired.

Oxidation of ethanol to ethanal to GAA. http://www.creative-chemistry.org.uk/alevel/module3/documents/N-ch3-07.pdf

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2FS0926-860X%2801%2900800-6

I was thinking something like freezing it out, but if it is soluble you'd still probably get problem with that? But not sure - I doubt it is fully miscible.. but maybe? It just doesn't seem like xylene and acetic acid are that a like... I'm not sure what it really would offer besides easier clean up and ability to heat..

As for the general production of acetic acid - I really think acetobacter, like how you'd make vinegar is a great answer.
Ethanol is super cheap, as is sugar - etc and it can easily produce 10-20% acetic acid in less than two days or so...

Nowadays, most vinegar is made in submerged tank culture, first described in 1949 by Otto Hromatka and Heinrich Ebner.[22] In this method, alcohol is fermented to vinegar in a continuously stirred tank, and oxygen is supplied by bubbling air through the solution. Using modern applications of this method, vinegar of 15% acetic acid can be prepared in only 24 hours in batch process, even 20% in 60-hour fed-batch process.[20]

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetic_acid#Oxidative_fermentation

If you could get 20-ish percent you ought to be able to concentrate that further without much problem or use it to produce sodium acetate.

I think just adding H2SO4 to the 20% to shift the ionization from CH3COO- to CH3COOH and than a simple solvent extraction using something like ethyl acetate would work fairly well... and than the remaining solution could be recycled back into the fermenter.

Either way, here is a pretty good article on its production (as vinegar) using a few rigged up reactors... as well as the history and all that junk
Tan_thesis.pdf

Also IIRC alginate entrapment can increase the yeild and this acetobacter reactor can also turn phenethyl alcohol into phenylacetic acid - and if that is the case, it can probably turn any fairly primary alcohol into the corresponding acid so than you've got a whole list of propanol to propanoic acid, butanol to butanoic, and so on...
Though, perhaps not?

Didn't you have some pretty good luck with a solvent/salt out extraction? or am I confusing that with something else? You used IPA, and salt, right? Did you ever try H2SO4 and ethyl acetate? It seems to be like the cheapest would be the H2SO4 and ethyl acetate.
1. No separation problems as the ethyl acetate and acetic acid do not react
2. The H2SO4 (or HCl/any strong acid) is easy and cheap - probably not even needed in very high quantities... just enough to significantly decrease the ionization of acetic acid? -- might be such a weak acid that it wouldn't even matter...

Yeh, It would work better with anhydrous NaOAc.

See whats taking place here is this,

Glacial acetic acid, AKA the crystals, are a dimmerized product of two Acetic acid molecules. In H₂O they disassociate meaning getting it dry is an issue at times. In a solvent such as DCM, Toluene, Xylene, Et₂O ect...ect.. they exist in the dimmerized state. There is an equilibrium setup in a duel phased mixture where you have a polar and a nonpolar in the same vessle. Problem is the polar almost always wins that fight and it makes extraction of Acetic acid difficult since it would rather mingle with the polar phase then dimmerize in the Nonpolar solvent. This is where the salts, whatever one choses to use, comes into play. There saturation of the Aquous phase causes the equilibrium to shift more to the dimmerized state and spend more time in the non polar then the polar. The paper is posted here somewhere but I believe KSO₄ was shown to have the most power in forcing the Acetic acid into the non polar phase so if thats avalible cheeply then I would surely use that.

However using my method the water is removed prior to solvent extraction for the most part due to the Sodium Sulfate forming the Decahydrate(10 water mols for every single Sodium Sulfate mol ). As long as addition of DCM and filtration is done below a certine temperature the Na₂SO₄*10H₂O removes almost all the water(in theory) and the resulting DCM fitrate can be distilled to yeild pretty crystals. I follow with a standard drying and filtering of the DCM using MgSO₄ to ensure its dry before distilling off the DCM to avoid complications from latent water down the line.

I chose DCM because of its rapid and clean evaporatation and non azeotropic distillationation with AcOH meaning a warm water bath will recover clean DCM to be reused and leave one with relatively pure Acetic acid of glacial status with one and only one distillation and no high heats which can lead to discolored decomposition products that dry distillation normally rapidly aquires.

This topic is academic.

Separation of Acetic Acid and Water by Distillation. Effect of Calcium Chloride Addition. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ie50484a043

Sedit @ http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/36278-acetic-acid-synthesis-distillation/

The general over the counter way of producing pure glacial acetic acid is to react baking soda with vinegar and evaporate to yeild Sodium acetate. React the sodium acetate with sulfuric acid and distill it to yeild pure glacial acetic acid.

I have performed this manytimes since the photography shops closed down around here and there are a few thing to take note about this.

First thing is after you boil away your solution and get sodium acetate recrystalize it atlest once or else you will have to throw away the first few ML of your distillate because it will be contaminated with some other organics that where present in the vinegar and you will see a scum floating on the surface after distilling.

Second note is something that some one just informed me about because I had a minor accident with it. Make sure to not use excess sodium bicarbonate because when you add your sulfuric acid the left over sodium bicarbonate will foam alot and in my case spray out the top of the flask and a little got on my face and hands which is something you DO NOT want.

All that being said it is a very easy procedure and pretty safe but just thought I would let you know a few things I had to learn along the way. It is time consuming but thats about the only obstical I can really think of.

LMAO Wizard, I read that link for a few seconds before I even realized that it was ME that wrote it, All I could think was "Damn that same thing happened to me once ", I remember when that shit blew up on me spraying me with H2SO4. Scared the shit out of me to say the lest man and burn my hands kind of bad, Could have been worse but lesson learned no doubt.

I don't think it has to do with laws that much as they found an non stinky substitute for GAA. I use to be able to buy it locallly as well but anymore no one carrys it.