PREDICTION OF MOLAR VOLUMES, VAPOR PRESSURES AND SUPERCRITICAL SOLUBILITIES OF ALKANES BY EQUATIONS OF STATE

Abstract

A generalized cubic equation of state which can represent all the cubic equations is introduced and thermodynamic property relations for it are presented. Five cubic equations of states with respective mixing rules are used to predict molar volumes and vapor pressures of pure alkanes (from methane till n-tritriacontane) and solubilities of solid wax components (high molecular weight alkanes) in supercritical solvents. They are the RK (Redlich-Kwong), MMM (Mohsennia-Modarress-Mansoori), RM (Riazi-Mansoori), PR (Peng-Robinson), and SRK (Soave-Redlich-Kwon) equations of state. The experimental data necessary to compare the equations of state are taken from the literature. It is demonstrated that the SRK equation of state is more accurate for predicting vapor pressures of alkanes. The RM equation of state is shown to be more accurate for predicting molar volumes of saturated and sub-cooled liquid alkanes as well as molar volumes of alkanes in their supercritical condition. For the solubility of wax components in supercritical solvents it is shown that the MMM equation of state gives the least AAD% for the 270 data points of 10 binary systems studied consisting of a high molecular weight alkane and supercritical ethane and carbon dioxide.