Tertiary alkylamines in solution with organic diluents are attractive extractants for the recovery of carboxylic acids from dilute aqueous phases. The aim of this study was to investigate the mechanism for extraction of organic acids from water by a long-chain aliphatic tertiary amine. In order to attain this objective, we studied the liquid-liquid equilibria between the triisooctylamine + 1-octanol + n-heptane system as solvent and an aqueous solution of an individual carboxylic acid such as citric, lactic and malic acids. The experiments showed that the partition coefficient for a particular organic acid depends on the kind of solute, notably when the acid concentration in the aqueous phase is low. A mathematical model, where both chemical association and physical distribution are taken into consideration, is proposed. The model suggests that the various complexes obtained between amine and organic acids contribute to the distribution of the solute between the coexisting phases in equilibrium.