Experimental study of the vapour–liquid equilibria of HI–I2–H2O ternary mixtures, Part 1: Experimental results around the atmospheric pressure

Abstract

In the framework of the massive production of hydrogen using the sulfur–iodine thermochemical cycle, the design of the reactive distillation column, chosen by CEA for the HIx section, requires the knowledge of the partial pressures of the gaseous species (HI, I2, H2O) in thermodynamic equilibrium with the liquid phase of the HI–I2–H2O ternary mixture in a wide range of concentrations up to 270 °C and 50 bar. In the first of these two companion papers, we describe the experimental device which enables the measurement of the total pressure and concentrations of the vapour phase (and thus the knowledge of the partial pressures of the different gaseous species) for the HI–I2–H2O mixture in the 20–140 °C range and up to 2 bar. This device is used to carry out a large set of experiments investigating various mixtures with optical on-line diagnostics (FTIR for HI and H2O, UV–visible for I2). This leads to the determination of the concentrations in the vapour phase for many experimental conditions, results of which are given in this paper. The companion paper (part 2) describes the experimental device which enables measurements of the total pressure and species concentrations in the vapour phase in the process domain. The experimental results obtained using both experimental devices, a premiere as far as we know, will be used in the future to establish a new thermodynamic model which will allow the reliability of the evaluation of the iodine part of the iodine/sulfur cycle to be increased.