The Equilibrium Thermal Physics of Supercritical Fluids

Boris Sedunov

Computer and Information Systems Department, Russian New University (ROSNOU), Moscow, Russia.

DOI: 10.4236/ijamsc.2013.12013                

Abstract

To discover particular features of pure supercritical fluids, important for the supercritical fluid extraction and cleaning technologies, the preprocessed and generalized experimental data from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) online database have been analyzed. The soft transition between gas-like and liquid-like structures in pure supercritical fluids has been considered in comparison with the abrupt vapor-liquid phase transition. A rough, diffused and boiling boundary between these structures in conditions of extra high gravity is opposed to a flat vapor-liquid boundary at a moderate gravity. The model for molecular diffusivity in carbon dioxide at temperatures near the critical temperature discovers its proportionality to the monomer fraction density. The cluster fraction based model for small molecular weight solids’ solubility in supercritical fluids has been suggested and successfully compared with the well-known experimental results for the solubility of silica in water.The model shows that at growing pressure the dissolution process has already startedin a real gas and discovers the cluster fractions’ role in the solubility process.

Keywords

Supercritical Fluid; Real Gas; Cluster; Extraction; Cleaning; Diffusivity; Solubility

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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