Author(s)

Loubna Nasri, Salima Bensaad, Zouhir Bensetiti

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Department of Pharmaceutical Engineering, University Constantine 3, Constantine, Algeria.

For the proper design of any extraction procedure based on supercritical solvents, it is essential to have a sound knowledge of the solubility data of different compounds and the accurate way to represent it. The solute’s solubility in a supercritical solvent is dependent on the solute, the solvent, and the operating conditions (temperature and pressure). Developing a comprehensive experimental data set is an onerous task and time consuming and, thus, the incentive to develop predictive tools is substantial. In this paper, a technique is presented and tested to correlate and predict solute’s solubility in different supercritical fluids with a methodology based on the expanded liquid theory, in which the solid-fluid equilibrium is modeled using the local composition model of UNIQUAC in which the interaction parameters are related to the solvent reduced density with empiric equations. The most advantages of this model include: it does not require the knowledge of critical properties and sublimation pressure of solid solutes and does take into account the binary interaction between solid solute and solvent. The evaluation of the proposed model capabilities is done by testing it on a large data base consisting of experimental solubility data taken from literature of 33 binary systems solid-SC fluid. The results obtained for both correlation and prediction show good agreement with the experimental data used. For the comparison we have considered some literature models that account for effect of the system conditions (temperature and pressure) in addition to the sublimation pressure of the solute through their introduction of the enhancement factor and a model based on a modified Peng-Robinson equation of state.

Solubility Modeling; Supercritical Fluids; Correlation; Prediction; Expanded Liquid; UNIQUAC

Nasri, L. , Bensaad, S. and Bensetiti, Z. (2013) Correlation and Prediction of the Solubility of Solid Solutes in Chemically Diverse Supercritical Fluids Based on the Expanded Liquid Theory. Advances in Chemical Engineering and Science, 3, 255-273. doi: 10.4236/aces.2013.34033.