Correlating the solubility of supercritical gases in high-molecular weight substances using a density-dependent equation

Abstract

Chrastil (1982) established that the solubility of a substance in a supercritical fluid can be correlated with the density of the pure supercritical gas. Recently, the solubility of supercritical fluids in different organic liquids was successfully correlated as a function solely of the supercritical fluid density, since we demonstrated that the supercritical fluid density also defines the solubility of the gas in the liquid phase. In this work, the solubility of supercritical carbon dioxide in high-molecular weight substances, such as high-molecular weight paraffins, alcohols, fatty acids, fatty acid methyl and ethyl esters, has been correlated and constants provided. More than 20 binary systems comprising around 1000 solubility data points were correlated, obtaining regression coefficients greater than 0.96 and confirming the goodness of the density-dependent equation previously reported. Copyright © 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).