Vapor-Liquid Equilibrium of Carbon Dioxide + Ethanol: Experimental Measurements with Acoustic Method and Thermodynamic Modeling

Abstract

Phase behavior of systems composed by supercritical carbon dioxide and ethanol is of great interest, especially in the processes involving supercritical extraction in which ethanol is used as a cosolvent. The development of an apparatus, which is able to perform the measurements of vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE) at high pressure using a combination of the visual and the acoustic methods, was successful and was proven to be suited for determining the isothermal VLE data of this system. The acoustic method, based on the variation of the amplitude of an ultra-sound signal passing through a mixture during a phase transition, was applied to investigate the phase equilibria of the system carbon dioxide + ethanol at temperatures ranging from 298.2 K to 323.2 K and pressures from 3.0 MPa to 9.0 MPa. The VLE data were correlated with Peng-Robinson equation of state combined with two different mixing rules and the SAFT equations of state as well. The compositions calculated with the models are in good agreement with the experimental data for the isotherms evaluated.