Thermodynamic properties of hydrophobic deep eutectic solvents and solubility of water and HMF in them: Measurements and PC-SAFT modeling

Abstract

Recently, hydrophobic deep eutectic solvents (DESs) were proposed as interesting solvents for biorefinery processes, such as the production of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) from glucose in an aqueous environment. Physicochemical property data of hydrophobic DES + water/HMF systems are of utmost importance for process design. In this work, density and vapor pressure of eight different hydrophobic DESs, as well as water solubility and HMF solubility in these DESs were experimentally determined. The solubility was modeled using the pseudo-pure component approach within the framework of Perturbed-Chain Statistical Associating Fluid Theory (PC-SAFT). New pure-component parameters for the eight hydrophobic DESs were obtained by fitting to measured density and vapor-pressure data, instead of to density data only. Based on these new pure-component parameters for the DESs, the solubilities of water and of HMF in the hydrophobic DESs were modeled in good agreement with the experimental data at 298 K and atmospheric pressure.