Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.43, No.20, 6569-6576, 2004
Development of a universal group contribution equation of state. 5. Prediction of the solubility of high-boiling compounds in Supercritical gases with the group contribution equation of state volume-translated Peng-Robinson
In recent years, supercritical extraction processes, reactions in supercritical fluids, and rapid expansion of supercritical solutions processes for the generation of microparticles have become of great interest for different industrial applications. For the design of such processes, the solubility of the various compounds (high-boiling substances, educts, products, and catalysts) as a function of the pressure, temperature, type, and amount of cosolvents in the supercritical fluid (SCF) is the most important quantity. In most cases, the solubilities are correlated using cubic equations of state (EoS). Because the experimental database is limited, predictive models would be desirable. In this paper, the potential of the group contribution EoS volume-translated Peng-Robinson (VTPR), which was already successfully applied for the prediction of vapor-liquid equilibria, gas solubilities, activity coefficients at infinite dilution, and excess enthalpies, was investigated for the prediction of solubilities of various solids and liquids in supercritical carbon dioxide, ethane, and ethylene. Besides the influence of pressure, temperature, and SCF, in particular how suitable the VTPR model is to predict the effect of cosolvents on the phase equilibrium behaviour was examined.