Vapor-liquid phase coexistence of alkane-carbon dioxide and perfluoroalkane-carbon dioxide mixtures
- Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States). Dept. of Chemical Engineering
Both government and industry are seeking benign substitutes for the many organic solvents used in industry. Solvents are used as media for cleaning, for chemical reactions, and for chemical separation, and most of the solvents used are hazardous to health, safety, and the environment. Supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO{sub 2}) is often considered as an ideal solvent substitute, but several important classes of substances -- water and hydrophilic substances; proteins, nucleic acids, and many other biomolecules; and most man-made high polymers, for example -- exhibit very low solubility in SC-CO{sub 2}. The authors carried out a molecular simulation study of the vapor-liquid equilibria of alkane-CO{sub 2} and perfluoroalkane-CO{sub 2} binary mixtures using the Gibbs ensemble Monte Carlo method. They used simple interaction site models and the conventional Lorentz-Berthelot combining rules for the cross interaction between the solute and solvent species with no adjustable parameters to predict the vapor-liquid phase equilibrium of the hexane-CO{sub 2} and perfluorohexane-CO{sub 2} mixtures. The predicted CO{sub 2} mole fraction on the liquid branch is higher than the experimental results by about 10--13%. The gas-phase solubility of hexane and perfluorohexane in CO{sub 2} is generally smaller than the experimental results. The model predicts a higher solubility for the perfluoroalkanes in CO{sub 2} in comparison with alkanes in CO{sub 2}, consistent with experiment. The simulation results suggest that the dispersion interaction and the geometric packing may have a predominant role in accounting for the solubility difference between alkane and pefluoroalkane in CO{sub 2}.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-96OR22464
- OSTI ID:
- 351563
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Physical Chemistry B: Materials, Surfaces, Interfaces, amp Biophysical, Vol. 103, Issue 21; Other Information: PBD: 27 May 1999
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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