Study of the Liquid Phase Volume Expansion for CO₂/Organic Solvent Systems

【Abstract】 The supercritical antisolvent (SAS) process has been developed in recent years for the formation of nano- and micro-particles. It is necessary to study the liquid phase volume expansion (LPVE) and find the relationships between the operating conditions and the LPVE in order to develop a practical method for determining the operation conditions and selecting an organic solvent for SAS process. The PR equation of state with vdW-1 mixing rule is used to calculate the LPVE for CO2/toluene, CO2/acetone and CO2/ethyl acetate systems, and the results show that the LPVE for each CO2/organic solvent system decreases as the temperature increases. The relationship between the LPVE and the solubility of CO2 in the liquid phase for CO2/organic solvent systems is investigated, and the results show that the LPVE is determined directly by the solubility of CO2 in the liquid phase, xCO2, and can be related to xCO2 independently. No matter what system of CO2/organic solvent is and how different the temperature is, the LPVEs have little difference as long as the solubility of CO2 in the liquid phase, xCO2 > keeps constant. The lower temperature is always favorable to the SAS process. The higher the solubility of CO2 in an organic solvent under certain operation condition, the more suitable it is to the SAS process.更多还原