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Amino acids partitioning including phenylalanine, glutamic acid, and tryptophan in aqueous and ionic liquid phases at temperature of 298.15 K and atmospheric pressure were measured. 1-Butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide used in this work can produce two phases with water immediately. The effect of aqueous solution pH on amino acids partitioning was studied and revealed that amino acid partitioning coefficient was decreased with increasing pH. This phenomenon pertains to the electrostatic interaction between cations of amino acid and the anions of ionic liquid which is decreased when pH increases. Considering the effect of pH, liquid-liquid equilibrium data of amino acids were obtained in a pH owning maximum partitioning coefficient. It was observed that chemical structure of amino acid has an important effect on partitioning of amino acids between two phases. Experimental data indicated that glutamic acid is mostly transferred to aqueous phase while tryptophan moves to the ionic liquid phase. In the modeling section, equilibrium behavior of water, amino acid and ionic liquid system were predicted by SAFT equation of state. Necessary parameters of water and pure ionic liquid for equation of state were measured and amino acid parameters were obtained from literature. Binary interactions of components were optimized by equilibrium data. NRTL model was used in order to analyze cabapility of SAFT EoS to predict the behavior of system. The results indicate that SAFT model anticipates liquid-liquid equilibrium of the system better than NRTL model. The percentage of average absolute deviation for SAFT equiation is 1.9%.

Temperature dependency of infrared band intensity for methylene rocking vibration could be used as indication for creation of solid crystals while decreasing temperature. In this work, different experiments were conducted to measure wax appearance temperature, WAT, such as cross polarized microscopy, rheometry and FTIR spectroscopy. Three Iranian crude oils were characterized based on the SARA test and PC-SAFT model was developed to predict WAT. The obtained results by FTIR spectroscopy and PC-SAFT model were in quite agreement. FTIR spectroscopy determined higher WAT values which may be due to its higher sensitivity to smaller wax crystals. Also, the effect of a polymeric crystal modifier (EVA) and an aromatic solvent (toluene) on wax precipitation was investigated. EVA dramatically decreased the pour point of lower waxy crude oils. Toluene dissolved polar compounds such as asphaltene and consequently decreased WAT and pour point. This observation confirmed that asphaltene supports the wax crystallization and its growth.

Asphaltene deposition in porous media, wellbore and surface facilities has been a severe problem in petroleum industry which causes considerable remediation costs annually. Asphaltenes are heavy and polydisperse fractions of crude oil which are insoluble in n-alkanes such as n-heptane. In this work, three Iranian crude oils were prepared for titration experiments with n-pentane, n-heptane and n-dodecane at different solvent ratios and constant temperature. The experimental data were correlated by perturbed chain form of statistical associating fluid theory (PC-SAFT). The association of asphaltene molecules has been considered in this model with adjusting the uncertain parameters (such as association energy and association volume of asphaltene pseudo component) to match the experimental data. PC-SAFT parameters for other non-associating pseudo components have been calculated using the correlations proposed in literature. The present study also evaluated the performance of SVR method as a supervised learning approach in prediction of asphaltene precipitation. Deviation of proposed models has been validated using the statistical evaluation criteria and graphical analysis. The results show that the proposed models have AAD values less than 0.073 and a high potential in prediction of asphaltene precipitation.

Wax precipitation may occur in production or transportation of crude oil form field which is a serious problem in petroleum industry. Flow assurance issues concerning wax precipitation make it necessary to develop a precise thermodynamic model to predict the wax appearance temperature and amount of precipitation at different conditions. In this work a new procedure has been proposed to characterize crude oil based on the SARA test considering the wax and asphaltene as single pseudo components. Two scenarios have been investigated for the survey of the crude oil characterization, with and without asphaltene pseudo component. Also, in this work, the Perturbed Chain form of the Statistical Associating Fluid Theory, PC-SAFT, has been developed to evaluate its ability for modeling of wax precipitation prediction. It is demonstrated that the developed PC-SAFT model can correlate the wax precipitation amount better than basic models (multiple solid, solid solution) typically used in the industry. The results obtained with the proposed model show a remarkable matching with the experimental data for wax precipitation values. The obtained results are very promising in providing better approach to model wax precipitation. The effect of asphaltene molecules on wax precipitation has been investigated by sensitivity analysis using Monte Carlo algorithm and the Artificial Neural Network as the base model. In this work, a three layer FFBP neural network has been constructed using the Levenberg–Marquardt training method to predict the wax precipitation amount at different conditions which are the network input parameters. Positive effect of asphaltene on wax precipitation confirmed that asphaltene molecules act like the nucleation sites for wax crystals. The obtained results in this work show that the asphaltene content of crude oil should be considered in wax precipitation models.

Classical molecular dynamics simulations are used to compute the solvation free energy of two pharmaceutical solids, namely ibuprofen and acetaminophen in carbon dioxide (CO2), over the density range of interest in supercritical processes. In order to examine the influence of the solvent model on the resulting free energies, three popular CO2 models (Zhang, EPM2, and TraPPE) are studied. Relatively large discrepancies for the solvation free energy exist between these CO2 models, suggesting that the former is sensitive to the different balances between dispersive and electrostatic forces used in these models. In particular, for the solvation of the highly polar (dipole moment of ∼5.2 Debye) acetaminophen molecule, such discrepancies are more pronounced than for the moderately polar ibuprofen (dipole moment of ∼1.6 D) molecule. Since there is an exponential relationship between the solvation free energy and solubility, the choice of the solvent model substantially affects the predicted solubility. For the solubility of the studied solutes, the value obtained using the TraPPE model is the highest, that of the EPM2 model is intermediate, and that of the Zhang model is the lowest. Generally, the simulations results show that the model with the largest quadrupole moment leads to a more negative solvation free energy and a higher solubility over the entire density range. Further, the decomposition of the solvation free energy into contributions stemming from electrostatics and dispersion interactions shows that the electrostatic interactions are important for a quantitative prediction of solid solubility, while the Lennard–Jones parameters of the solute and solvent are more important for qualitative agreement. Additionally, the infinite-dilution partial molar volume of the two solutes is estimated from the pressure derivative of the solvation free energies. With density increasing beyond the value corresponding to the zero partial molar volume of the solute (minimum solvation free energy), the repulsive part of Lennard–Jones potential wins over the attractive interactions, and the solvent strength of supercritical CO2 decreases; however, due to the increase in the chemical potential of the pure solid (effect of the Poynting correction), the solubility further increases. Overall, these results demonstrate the importance of a proper choice of quadrupole moment of the solvent model, which is crucial for quantitative predictions of the solid solubility in supercritical CO2.

In this work, PC-SAFT, an equation of state based on perturbation theory, is applied to predict the reservoir fluids phase behavior. PC-SAFT parameters for pure components have previously been assessed, but they cannot be determined for petroleum fractions with unspecified components and composition. In order to remove this difficulty and making use of PC-SAFT model in the reservoir fluids simulations, a new approach is studied which leads to appearing generalized correlations for the estimation of PC-SAFT parameters for petroleum cuts and plus fractions using only their molecular weight and specific gravity, without the essential need for the characterization of petroleum fractions in different homologous hydrocarbon families. The proposed technique is then validated with the reliable experimental PVT data of reservoir fluids, including saturation pressure and differential liberation test (oil formation volume factor, soluble gas oil ratio, and liquid phase density) for 10 oil samples. Subsequently, available experimental data are compared to results calculated by PC-SAFT model for all existing samples. Afterwards, a comparison between PC-SAFT model and two widely used cubic equations of state (PR and SRK EOS) was also conducted. The results demonstrated PC-SAFT model estimation capabilities and ease of use as an effective tool for describing the phase behavior of reservoir fluids in a wide range of scales and applications. Moreover, the effect of parameter tuning process on reduction of error values was investigated and acceptable results were obtained.

Parameters of the PC-SAFT Equation of State (EoS) for pure components are generally determined by matching the saturation pressure and liquid density experimental data. These experimental data are unavailable for petroleum cuts and plus fractions of the petroleum reservoir fluids. In this work, new correlations as functions of specific gravity and molecular weight were developed to estimate the PC-SAFT parameters of petroleum cuts with unknown composition. It was shown that the proposed correlations accurately estimate the PC-SAFT parameters of the pure components published in the literature. Then, the obtained correlations were used and the PVT experimental data for various real reservoir fluids was modeled using the PC-SAFT EoS and the results were compared to the modeled results using the Peng-Robinson EoS. The obtained results showed that the PC-SAFT EoS along with the proposed correlations presents acceptable results for phase behavior modeling of the reservoir petroleum fluids.

Foam flooding has been applied as a promising method in enhanced oil recovery to obviate the challenges of gas flooding such as fingering, channeling and overriding. However, long-term foam stability is crucial for mobility control. In this work, the effective mechanisms on foam stability in the presence of CaCO3 nanoparticles were assessed both theoretically and experimentally. The static and dynamic behaviors of cationic surfactant (HTAB) foam in the presence of CaCO3 nanoparticles with different hydrophobicity were evaluated. The CaCO3 nanoparticles were treated with a series of long-chain fatty acids to generate a range of wettability. Afterward, the underlying mechanisms were revealed by conducting the supplementary experiments, including measurements of effective diffusion coefficient (Deff), Henry's constant (KH), interfacial tension (IFT), and zeta potential of nanoparticles. Further, efforts were made to analyze the interfacial interactions using xDLVO theory. By increasing of nanoparticles hydrophobicity, the continuous reduction of effective diffusion coefficient, solubility, and IFT was observed, which means higher foam stability. However, the adsorption of modified nanoparticles on the air-solution interface could reduce the total disjoining pressure between two parallel plates, supported by xDLVO prediction. This phenomenon has an adverse effect on the thin film stability. Therefore, there would be an optimum extent of nanoparticles surface modification to obtain the most stable foam stability, which was in agreement with the both bulk and porous media observations. The optimum condition was shifted to the nanoparticles modified with the lower chain fatty acids by increasing the concentration of fatty acid solutions. In this case, the negative effect of reduced disjoining pressure was more pronounced.

In this work, a new model based on multilayer kinetic adsorption mechanism has been proposed to account asphaltene adsorption in porous media under dynamic condition and the model was verified using experimental data obtained in this work and also with those reported in the literature. In the proposed model two steps are considered for asphaltene adsorption. The first step is taken as adsorption of asphaltenes on the surface of the porous media and the second step is taken as adsorption of asphaltenes on the asphaltenes already adsorbed on the porous media. The Crank-Nicholson method, central difference in space and trapezoidal rule in time, giving second order convergence in time was applied to develop a computer program using MATLAB software. Also, the Rung-Kutta fourth order scheme has been applied to calculate the volume fraction of asphaltene adsorption. The results show that the proposed model based on multilayer adsorption kinetic mechanism of aphaltene with the absolute average deviation 0.7% can predict more accurately the asphaltene adsorption experimental data in comparison to the previous models based on the monolayer adsorption kinetic and equilibrium mechanism. Sensitivity analysis shows that the proposed model is more sensitive to the first step of adsorption than the second step of adsorption. Also, a series of experiments was carried to investigate the asphaltene adsorption using UV–vis spectroscopy in order to study the effect of different parameters on asphaltene adsorption mechanisms during dynamic condition in porous media such as concentration, asphaltene composition, flow rate and type of porous media. The experimental results show that adsorption is controlled by the type of porous media rather than the asphaltene concentration of solution. Also, it was found that the adsorption process in porous media is controlled by kinetics mechanism during dynamic condition.

In this work, the thermodynamic behavior of aqueous solutions containing the solutes NaCl, glucose, and/or urea is investigated. These substances are vital components for living bodies and further they are main components of blood serum. Osmotic coefficients were determined by cryoscopic measurements in single-solute and multi-solute aqueous solutions containing salts (NaCl, KCl, CaCl2), glucose, and/or urea. The results show that NaCl determines the osmotic coefficients in the urea/glucose/NaCl/water system. Investigation of the effect of different salts on osmotic coefficients revealed ion-specific effects. At physiologically important solute concentrations in typical blood serum solutions, the osmotic coefficients were found to be in the range of 0.90–0.93. In a second step, the state of water in different glucose/salt/water and urea/salt/water systems was investigated. Depending on the kind of salt, the chemical potential of water in urea/salt/water is either higher or lower than in glucose/salt/water systems at equal nonelectrolyte concentrations. This result was found to be independent of the salt molality. Finally, the investigated systems were modeled with the Pitzer model and the ePC-SAFT equation of state, which allowed predicting of the properties of these multi-solute aqueous solutions.

New experimental results are presented for the solubility of carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide in the ionic liquid 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate ([C8mim][PF6]) at temperatures range from (303.15 to 353.15) K and pressures up to about 2 MPa. The solubility of the mixture of CO2/H2S in [C8mim][PF6] under various feed compositions were also measured at temperatures of (303.15, 323.15 and 343.15) K and the pressure up to 1 MPa. The solubility of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide increased with increasing pressure and decreased with increasing temperature and the solubility of H2S is about three times that of CO2 in the particular ionic liquid studied. The measured data were correlated using extended Henry’s law included Pitzer’s virial expansion for the excess Gibbs energy, and the generic Redlich–Kwong cubic equation of state proposed for gas/ionic liquid systems. The correlations from the two models show quite good consistency with the experimental data for CO2/IL and H2S/IL binary mixtures within experimental uncertainties. For CO2/H2S/IL ternary mixtures, the RK model shows better correlation with the experimental values. We also studied the effect of cation alkyl chain length on the CO2 and H2S solubility by comparison of the experimental data of this study with those of previous reports. As the cation alkyl chain length became longer, the solubility of CO2 and H2S increased in the ionic liquid. Additionally, the influence of the anion on the solubility is studied by comparing the solubility of CO2 and H2S in [C8mim][PF6] with those in [C8mim][Tf2N]. As a result, CO2 and H2S have higher solubility in the IL with [Tf2N]− as the anion.

Rheological behavior of two crude oils and their surfactant-stabilized emulsions with initial droplet sizes ranging from 0.5 to 75 µm were investigated at various temperatures under steady and dynamic shear testing conditions. In order to evaluate the morphology and Stability of emulsions, microscopic analysis was carried out over three months and average diameter and size distribution of dispersed droplets were determined. The water content and surfactant concentration ranged from 10 to 60% vol/vol and 0.1 to 10% wt/vol, respectively. The results indicated that the rheological properties and the physical structure and stability of emulsions were significantly influenced by the water content and surfactant concentration. The crude oils behaved as Newtonian fluids over a wide range of shear rates, whereas the emulsions behaved as non-Newtonian fluids, indicating shear-thinning effects over the entire range of shear rates. The viscosity, storage modulus and degree of elasticity were found to be significantl...

The strong bases statistical associated fluid theory (SAFT) equations of state allow modeling for a wide range of scales and applications. The equilibrium calculations are very time-consuming in SAFT-based family of equations of state; therefore the number of components used in describing a fluid mixture must be reduced by grouping. On the other hand, in some applications it is required to retrieve the detailed fluid description from equilibrium calculation performed on the lumped fluid description. The purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic approach for lumping and delumping with equilibrium calculations using the Perturbed Chain (PC)-SAFT equation of state. The methodology proposed by this paper is to calculate some delumping coefficients from flash calculations performed on the lumped system. Later on those delumping coefficients will be used to retrieve the detailed compositions of the fluid phases from the lumped mixture. To prepare the lumped system, the components are classified into groups through a clustering algorithm and the group properties are calculated according to mixing rules. To examine the accuracy and efficiency of the suggested methodology, it is applied to four synthetic gas samples and two real samples, one being a natural gas condensate and the other one is an oil reservoir fluid. It will be shown that based on the proposed method the delumped equilibrium ratios are close to detailed equilibrium ratios. The observed deviations are small and can be accepted.

Urea and inorganic ions are present in some of the physiological systems, e.g. urine. Understanding the interactions in urea/salt/water is a preliminary step to shed light on more complicated behavior of multi-component physiological systems. State-of-the-art models as well as thermophysical properties can be applied to understand the interactions in these systems. In order to determine such interactions densities, mean ionic activity coefficients (MIACs), osmotic coefficients, and solubility were measured in aqueous solutions of urea and different salts. Densities were determined at temperatures 293.15, 303.15, and 313.15 K for urea concentrations up to 3 molal and up to 1 molal for NaCl. Osmotic coefficients and MIACs were obtained at 310.15 K by using the vapor-pressure osmometry and potentiometry methods, respectively. Ternary aqueous urea solutions containing NaCl, KCl, NaBr, KBr, LiBr, NaNO3, and LiNO3 at two different concentrations of urea (0.3 and 1 molal) as well as at three salt concentrations (0.25, 0.5, and 0.75 molal) were considered. Moreover, urea solubility was also measured at 310.15 K in 3 and 5 molal NaCl solutions in the present work. Experimental data obtained in this work showed that the salt primarily dictates the volumetric properties and the MIAC while the solute with higher concentration determines the behavior of osmotic coefficients in these solutions. The ePC-SAFT model (without any adjustable mixture parameter) was used to accurately predict the experimental densities, activity and osmotic coefficients, and solubilities of the studied mixtures.

The mean spherical approximation (MSA) model, coupled with two hard sphere models, was used to predict the activity coefficients of mixtures of electrolyte solutions at different temperatures and concentrations. The models, namely the Ghotbi-Vera-MSA (GV-MSA) and Mansoori et al.-MSA (BMCSL-MSA), were directly used without introducing any new adjustable parameters for mixing of electrolyte solutions. In the correlation step, the anion diameters were considered to be constant, whereas the cation diameters were considered to be concentration dependent. The adjustable parameters were determined by fitting the models to the experimental mean ionic activity coefficients for single aqueous electrolytes at fixed temperature. The results showed that the studied models predict accurately the activity coefficients for single electrolyte aqueous solutions at different temperatures. In the systems of binary aqueous electrolyte solutions with a common anion, the GV-MSA model has slightly better accuracy in predicting the activity coefficients. Also, it was observed that the GV-MSA model can more accurately predict the activity coefficients for ternary electrolyte solutions with a common anion, especially at higher concentrations.

Equations of state based on the statistical associating fluid theory for potentials of variable range (SAFT-VR) and the perturbed chain statistical associating fluid theory (PC-SAFT) have been used to model the PVT behavior of ionic liquids and the solubility of H2S in six imidazolium-based ionic liquids. The studied systems included [bmim][PF6], [hmim][PF6], [bmim][BF4], [hmim][BF4], [bmim][NTF2] and [hmim][NTF2] at various temperatures and pressures. For pure components, parameters of the models have been obtained by fitting the models to experimental data on liquid densities; the average relative deviation between the calculated and experimental densities for ionic liquids is less than 2.42% in the PC-SAFT model and 5.44% in the SAFT-VR approach, the latter which incorporates the square-well potential for short-range interactions. In both models an additional term has been added to account for dipole–dipole interactions between solute molecules resulting from the permanent charges on the chain molecules of the solvents. The model parameters have also been correlated as functions of the molecular weight of the solvents. For binary mixtures of ionic liquids and H2S, the association interactions between H2S molecules and between the ionic liquids and H2S molecules have also been taken into account in both approaches, using binary interaction coefficients. The results show an average deviation of less than 5% in the calculation of the mole fraction of H2S in the ionic liquids. The effect of inclusion of the polar term has been studied for binary systems in both models.

In this work, PEG 1500, MgSO4 and water were used to create an aqueous two-phase system and the effect of temperature was surveyed by obtaining binodal data and equilibrium data at 35, 40 and 45°C; compositions of mixture were obtained by atomic absorption spectrometer and refractometery method. Results showed that with increasing temperature, the solution tends to attain a two-phase region and the slope and length of tie lines increases. Modified Wilson equation was used to correlate this system, adjustable parameters were evaluated directly from experimental data and good agreement with experimental data was obtained. The overall average relative deviation was found to be less than 6%.

Experimental values for surface tension of single and mixed electrolyte solutions were correlated using the models based on the perturbation theory. The Mean Spherical Approximation (MSA) model, coupled with the Ghotbi–Vera (GV) and the Mansoori et al. (BMCSL) equations of state, were used to correlate the experimental values of the surface tension. The results showed that the models can favourably correlate the experimental values for single electrolyte solutions. However, it was observed that the GV–MSA model can more accurately predict the surface tension for single electrolytes, especially at higher concentrations. Two different expressions for concentration dependency of cation hydrated diameters were used. Therefore, in terms of such dependency different forms of the models, i.e ., GV–MSA1, GV–MSA2, BMCSL–MSA1 and BMCSL–MSA2 were introduced. It should be stated that the prediction of the surface tension for the mixed electrolyte solutions were made without introducing any new adjustable parameters. The results showed that GV–MSA2 model can predict more accurately the surface tension of electrolyte mixtures particularly at higher concentrations. Finally, the GV–MSA model was directly used to correlate the experimental results for the surface tension for both single and mixed electrolyte solutions with 2 and 4 adjustable parameters. The results showed that both of the models can accurately predict the experimental data of surface tension. These models can favourably fit and also, predict the surface tension of single electrolyte solutions with less than 1% average absolute relative deviation (AARD). The prediction capability of the proposed models is also acceptable for mixtures of electrolytes.

The solubility of hydrogen sulfide in three ionic liquids, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate ([bmim][PF6]), 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate ([bmim][BF4]), and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide ([bmim][Tf2N]), at temperatures ranging from (303.15 to 343.15) K and pressures up to 1 MPa was determined. The solubility data were correlated using the Krichevsky−Kasarnovsky equation, and Henry’s law constants at different temperatures were obtained. From the solubility data, the partial molar thermodynamic functions of solution such as Gibbs energy, enthalpy, and entropy were calculated. Comparison showed that the solubility of H2S in these three ionic liquids was in sequence: [bmim][Tf2N] > [bmim][BF4] > [bmim][PF6].

A modified form of the UNIQUAC-NRF activity coefficient model was used to study the phase behaviour of the aqueous two-phase systems (ATPSs) of polyethylene glycol (PEG) and dextran (DEX) with different molecular weights at various temperatures. In the proposed model, a ternary interaction parameter was added to the expression for the excess Gibbs free energy and, in turn, to the corresponding activity coefficient rendered by the UNIQUAC-NRF model. The combinatorial part of the new model takes the same form as that of the original UNIQUAC model and the residual part considers the nonrandomness and also the binary and the ternary interactions among the molecules in mixtures of PEG, DEX, and water. The results show that the new model can more accurately correlate the experimental data for the systems studied in this work than those obtained from the original UNIQUAC and the UNIQUAC-NRF activity coefficient models. In order to favourably compare the results the same minimisation procedure and the same experi...

In this paper, a new Gibbs energy model is proposed to study the thermophysical properties of aqueous electrolyte solutions at various temperatures. The proposed model assumes that the electrolytes completely dissociate in solution. The model also has two temperature-independent adjustable parameters that were regressed using experimental values of the mean ionic activity coefficients (MIAC) for 87 electrolyte solutions at 298.15 K. Results from the proposed model for the MIAC were compared with those obtained from the E-Wilson, E-NRTL, Pitzer and the E-UNIQUAC models, and the adjustable model parameters were used directly to predict the osmotic coefficients at this temperature. The results showed that the proposed model can accurately correlate the MIAC and predict the osmotic coefficients of the aqueous electrolyte solutions better on the average than the other models studied in this work at 298.15 K. Also, the proposed model was examined to study the osmotic coefficient and vapor pressure for a number of aqueous electrolyte solutions at high temperatures. It should be stated that in order to calculate the osmotic coefficients for the electrolyte solutions, the regressed values of parameters obtained for the vapor pressure at high temperatures were used directly. The results obtained for the osmotic coefficients and vapor pressures of electrolyte solutions indicate that good agreement is attained between the experimental data and the results of the proposed model. In order to unequivocally compare the results, the same experimental data and same minimization procedure were used for all of the studied models.

A model based on the perturbation theory of fluids was proposed to correlate the experimental data for surface tension of pure hydrocarbons in a wide range of temperature. The results obtained for the pure hydrocarbons were directly used to predict the surface tension for binary hydrocarbon mixtures at various temperatures. In the proposed model, a modified form of the square well potential energy between the molecules of the reference fluid was taken into account while the Lennard–Jones dispersion energy was considered to be dominant amongst the molecules as the perturbed term to the reference part of the model. In general, the proposed model has three adjustable parameters which are chain length, m, size, σ, and energy, e/κ, parameters, but in some cases the number of parameters was reduced to two, thereby setting the chain length to be unity for pure hydrocarbons. The regressed values of these parameters were obtained using the experimental data for pure hydrocarbons at different temperatures. The results showed that these parameters can be related to the molar mass of hydrocarbons. The model was also extended to predict the surface tension of binary hydrocarbon mixtures using the parameters obtained for the pure compounds. It is worth noting that no additional parameter has been introduced into the model in the extension of the model to the mixtures studied in this work. The results showed that the proposed model can accurately correlate the surface tension of pure hydrocarbons. Also the results showed that the surface tension for binary mixture of hydrocarbons can be accurately predicted using the proposed model over a wide temperature range.

In this work, the Ion Pair Modified Ghotbi-Vera Mean Spherical Approximation (IP-MGV-MSA) model was proposed to correlate the mean ionic activity coefficients (MIAC) for a number of symmetric and asymmetric aqueous electrolyte solutions at 25 °C. The new model is based on the recently proposed MGV-MSA model by Mortazavi-Manesh et al. In the IP-MGV-MSA model, the effects arising from the ion pair formation in the electrolyte solution was taken into account. Also, in the proposed model, while the cation diameter as well as the relative permittivity of water was considered to be dependent on electrolyte concentration, the anion diameter was independent of electrolyte concentration. The results obtained from the IP-MGV-MSA model showed that the model can accurately correlate the MIAC of single electrolyte solutions, in which ion pairs are formed. These results were also compared with those obtained from the GV-MSA and MGV-MSA models. The comparison showed that in the electrolyte solutions in which ion pairs are formed, the IP-MGV-MSA model can give more superior results than those obtained from the MGV-MSA and GV-MSA models. In the proposed model, the equilibrium constant of ion pair formation, K , is an adjustable parameter and can be obtained using the experimental data of the MIAC for electrolyte solutions. It should be noted that the values for the MIAC obtained from the IP-MGV-MSA model were converted from the McMillan–Mayer (MM) framework to that of the Lewis–Randall (LR) in order to be compatible with the experimental data.

In this study, water activities for the ternary systems of PEG6000 + sodium citrate (Na3Cit) + H2O and PEG6000 + potassium citrate (K3Cit) + H2O have been measured using an improved isopiestic method over the entire homogeneous mixing range at 298.15 K. From these measurements, values of the vapor pressure of solutions were also determined. The experimental data for the activity of water, collected in this work, were accurately correlated with local composition based models of the NRTL, modified NRTL, Wilson and modified Wilson. The results showed that these models can accurately correlate the water activity data generated in this work.

In this work, two “classical” (UNIFAC-FV, Entropic-FV) and two “recent” free-volume (FV) models (Kannan-FV, Freed-FV) are comparatively evaluated for polymer–solvent vapor–liquid equilibria including both aqueous and non-aqueous solutions. Moreover, some further developments are presented here to improve the performance of a recent model, the so-called Freed-FV. First, we propose a modification of the Freed-FV model accounting for the anomalous free-volume behavior of aqueous systems (unlike the other solvents, water has a lower free-volume percentage than polymers). The results predicted by the modified Freed-FV model for athermal and non-athermal polymer systems are compared to other “recent” and “classical” FV models, indicating an improvement for the modified Freed-FV model for aqueous polymer solutions. Second, for the original Freed-FV model, new UNIFAC group energy parameters are regressed for aqueous and alcohol solutions, based on the physical values of the van der Waals volume and surface areas for both FV-combinatorial and residual contributions. The prediction results of both “recent” and “classical” FV models using the new regressed energy parameters are significantly better, compared to using the classical UNIFAC parameters, for VLE of aqueous and alcohol polymer systems.

In this work, a modified free-volume (FV) model based on the UNIQUAC-Nonrandom factor (UNIQUAC-NRF) model developed by Haghtalab and Asadollahi was proposed. While the combinatorial part of the proposed model for activity coefficient takes the same form as that of the entropic free-volume (entropic-FV) model, the residual part is similar to that of the UNIQUAC-NRF model. The proposed model, i.e. , the FV-UNIQUAC-NRF model overcomes the main shortcoming of the original UNIQUAC-NRF model in predicting the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) for polymer solutions. The appearance of the LCST is believed to be attributed to the existence of the free volume differences between polymer and solvent molecules. Thus, the models without considering such differences fail to predict the LCST behavior of polymer solutions. The proposed model was applied to correlate the experimental data of (liquid + liquid) equilibria (LLE) for a number of binary polymer solutions at various temperatures. The values for the binary characteristic energy parameters for the proposed model and the FV-UNIQUAC model along with their average relative deviations from the experimental data were reported. It should be stated that the binary polymer solutions studied in this work were considered as monodisperse. The results obtained from the FV-UNIQUAC-NRF model were compared with those obtained from the FV-UNIQUAC model. The results of the proposed model show that the FV-UNIQUAC-NRF model can accurately correlate the experimental data for LLE of polymer solutions studied in this work. Also the error produced from the FV-UNIQUAC-NRF model show the slightly better accuracy in comparison with that from the FV-UNIQUAC model. The clear advantage of the proposed model, contrary to the original UNIQUAC-NRF model, is its capability in predicting the LCST for binary polymer solutions.

In this work, a new two-parameter cubic equation of state is presented based on perturbation theory for predicting phase behavior of pure compounds and of hydrocarbons and non-hydrocarbons. The parameters of the new cubic equation of state are obtained as functions of reduced temperature and acentric factor. The average deviations of the predicted vapor pressure, liquid density and vapor volume for 40 pure compounds are 1.116, 5.696 and 3.083%, respectively. Also the enthalpy and entropy of vaporization are calculated by using the new equation of state. The average deviations of the predicted enthalpy and entropy of vaporization are 2.393 and 2.358%, respectively. The capability of the proposed equation of state for predicting some other thermodynamic properties such as compressibility, second virial coefficient, sound velocity in gases and heat capacity of gases are given, too. The comparisons between the experimental data and the results of the new equation of state show the accuracy of the proposed equation with respect to commonly used equations of state, i.e. PR and SRK. The zeno line has been calculated using the new equation of state and the obtained result compared with quantities in the literatures. Bubble pressure and mole fraction of vapor for 16 binary mixtures are calculated. Averages deviations for bubble pressure and mole fraction of vapor are 9.380 and 2.735%, respectively.

In this work a modified form of the Ghotbi–Vera Mean Spherical Approximation model (MGV-MSA) has been used to correlate the mean ionic activity coefficients (MIAC) for a number of symmetric and asymmetric aqueous electrolyte solutions at 25 °C. In the proposed model the hard sphere as well as the electrostatic contributions to the MIAC and the osmotic coefficient of the previously GV-MSA model has been modified. The results of the proposed model for the MIAC of the electrolyte solutions studied in this work are used to directly calculate the values of the osmotic coefficients without introducing any new adjustable parameter. In the MGV-MSA model the cation diameter as well as the relative permittivity of water depends on the electrolyte concentration. Having considered such dependency for both cation and relative permittivity for water in an electrolyte solution the modification of the GV-MSA has been made. It should be stated that in the MGV-MSA model the anion diameter in the solution similar to that in the GV-MSA model remains constant and independent of the electrolyte concentration. The results obtained from the proposed model have been favorably compared with those of the GV-MSA model. The results showed that the MGV-MSA model can more accurately correlate the MIAC of the single electrolyte solutions than those of the GV-MSA model. The same comparison has been observed in case of the osmotic coefficients for the electrolyte solutions studied in this work. It should be noted that in order to do an unequivocal comparison between the results obtained from the models used in this work the same minimization procedure and the same experimental data for the MIAC and the osmotic coefficients have been used. Also it should be mentioned that in the MGV-MSA model the conversion from the McMillan–Mayer (MM) framework to that of the Lewis–Randall (LR) has been performed. It has been concluded that such transformation can affect the results in particular at higher electrolyte concentrations.

An equation of state based on the statistical associating fluid theory for potentials of variable range (SAFT-VR) is used to model 7 hydrogen-bonding solvents and 23 electrolyte solutions. Solvent–solvent hydrogen bonding interactions are explicitly taken into account as in other versions of the SAFT approach. In addition, long-range Coulombic interactions between ionic species are accounted for using the non-restricted mean-spherical approximation, while solvent–solvent and solvent–ion dispersion interactions are included and are treated using Yukawa potentials. Previously a similar approach had been proposed in which the dispersion interactions were treated using square-well potentials. In this work a comparison is made between the two models. Vapour pressure, solution densities and activity coefficients are examined using both salt-specific parameters as well as ion-specific parameters. The salt-specific model is especially useful in terms of considering solutions at very high concentrations (molalities of the order of 20 and above). The model is also used to predict the vapour pressure of a mixed salt system.

The main purpose of this work is to present a free-volume combinatorial term in predicting vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE) and solid–liquid equilibrium (SLE) of polymer/solvent and light and heavy hydrocarbon/hydrocarbon mixtures. The proposed term is based on a modification of the original Freed Flory–Huggins model, replacing the molar volume with a free-volume (FV) term. Using an extensive database for athermal polymer solutions at finite dilution, the single parameter of the model has been well adjusted. The results obtained from the model proposed in this work were favorably compared with those obtained from the well-established entropic-FV based models, i.e., the original entropic-FV (EFV) and the modified entropic-FV (MEFV) models. The results were also compared with those of the original UNIFAC-FV model as well as a modified UNIFAC-FV model, Kannan-FV, recently proposed model by Kannan et al. The results obtained from the proposed model showed that better improvement can be attained for the polymer systems with energetic interactions as well as for VLE and SLE study of heavy alkane solutes in light alkane solvents. This observation can be further verified by comparison of the results obtained from the proposed model with those of the molecular simulation data.

A new equation of state based on the Statistical Associating Fluid Theory (SAFT) is presented to study the phase behavior of associating and non-associating fluids. In the new equation of state, the hard sphere contribution to compressibility factor of the simplified version of the SAFT (SSAFT) is replaced with that proposed by Ghotbi and Vera. The Ghotbi–Vera SSAFT (GV-SSAFT) was also extended to study the phase behavior of associating and non-associating mixtures. The GV-SSAFT like the SSAFT equation of state has three adjustable segment parameters for non-associating fluids and five parameters for associating fluids. The experimental data of liquid densities and vapor pressures for pure fluids studied in this work were used to obtain the best values for the parameters of the GV-SSAFT. The results obtained from the GV-SSAFT for liquid densities and vapor pressures of pure associating and non-associating fluids were compared with those obtained from the SSAFT equation of state. The results showed that the GV-SSAFT similar to the SSAFT can accurately correlate the experimental data of liquid density and vapor pressure for systems studied. On the other hand the results obtained from two SAFT-based equations of state are almost identical. In order to show capability of the GV-SSAFT and SSAFT equations of state, they were used to directly calculate heat of vaporization for a number of pure associating and non-associating fluids. Slightly better results for heat of vaporization comparing to the experimental data were obtained from the GV-SSAFT EOS than those obtained from the SSAFT. The GV-SSAFT was also used to study the VLE phase behavior for a number of binary associating and non-associating mixtures. The results also showed that the GV-SSAFT can be successfully used to study the phase behavior of mixtures studied in this work.

In this work the Ghotbi–Vera mean spherical approximation (GV-MSA) model, coupled with two different expressions for the cation-hydrated diameters, was used in predicting the mean ionic activity coefficients (MIAC) of electrolytes for a number of the mixed-solvent and mixed-salt electrolyte solutions at 25 °C. In all cases the cation diameters in solutions changed with concentration of electrolyte while the anion diameters were considered to be constant and equal to the corresponding Pauling diameters. In application of the GV-MSA model to the electrolyte systems, two different expressions were used for concentration dependency of cation-hydrated diameters, i.e., the GV-MSA1 and GV-MSA2 models. In case of the electrolyte solutions containing the mixed-solvent of water and alcohol, the dielectric constants of the mixed solvents were obtained by simple regression of polynomial equations in terms of weight fraction of alcohol to the pertinent experimental data available in the literature. For the mixed-salt and mixed-solvent electrolyte solutions, in order to directly calculate the MIAC of electrolytes without introducing any new adjustable parameter, the values obtained in this work for the cation-hydrated diameters in the single aqueous electrolyte solutions were used. The results obtained in this work showed that the GV-MSA2 could more accurately correlate the MIAC of electrolytes in the single aqueous electrolyte solutions in comparison to those of the GV-MSA1 and Pitzer models. Also, the results showed that the GV-MSA-based models could accurately predict the MIAC of electrolytes in the mixed-solvent electrolyte solutions in comparison to those obtained from the model of Pitzer. In case of the mixed-salt electrolyte solutions the results of the two GV-MSA-based models studied in this work reasonably predict the MIAC of electrolytes in the mixed-salt electrolyte solutions without introducing any additional adjustable parameters compared to those obtained from the model of Pitzer with two adjustable parameters.

Two different models based on Guggenheim's renormalized canonical partition function proposed by Wang and Vera, the generalized quasi-chemical model (GEM-QC) and the generalized regular solution model (GEM-RS), have been used in molecular form to correlate the liquid–liquid equilibrium (LLE) of experimental data for ternary systems containing water, propionic acid (PA) and organic solvents. Both the GEM-QC and the GEM-RS models have nine adjustable parameters for a ternary system, which are obtained from a least square fit of the models to the LLE experimental data. In this work the same assumptions made to develop the simplified GEM-RS model (GEM-RS2) by Wang and Vera, have been applied to the GEM-QC model (GEM-QC2), in order to reduce the number of adjustable parameters from 9 to 6. The GEM-RS2 and the GEM-QC2 models have also been used for correlating the LLE experimental data for ternary systems. The results obtained from the studied models were compared to those of the NRTL and UNIQUAC models. The comparison shows that the GEM-QC model can correlate the LLE experimental data of ternary systems more accurately than the other studied models. Finally, the selectivity of five different organic solvents that are used to recover PA from its aqueous solution has been compared.

The non-primitive mean spherical approximation (NP-MSA) based models were used to correlate the individual and the mean ionic activity coefficients of the symmetric and asymmetric aqueous electrolyte solutions. The results of the models for the mean ionic activity coefficients were directly used to calculate the osmotic coefficient for the electrolyte solutions studied in this work. In the NP-MSA models, the Ghotbi–Vera and the Boublik–Mansoori–Carnahan–Starling–Leland hard sphere equation of state as the reference system coupled with the non-primitive mean spherical approximation model (NP-GV-MSA and NP-BMCSL-MSA models, respectively). In correlating the mean ionic activity coefficients of electrolyte solutions, while the hard sphere diameters for anion were treated as a concentration-independent adjustable parameter, the diameters for cation were assumed to be concentration dependent. In the use of the non-primitive MSA-based models in correlating the individual ionic activity coefficients of electrolyte solutions, both anion and cation diameters were considered to be concentration dependent. The results for the mean ionic activity coefficients obtained from the NP-GV-MSA model compared favorably with those of the NP-BMCSL-MSA model produced in this work and also with those of NP−BMCSL-MSA available in the literature. It was shown that the NP-GV-MSA model more accurately calculate the mean ionic activity and the osmotic coefficients than those obtained from the NP−BMCSL-MSA models.

The generalized quasi-chemical (GEM-QC) model proposed by Wang and Vera is modified to correlate better the phase equilibrium and to overcome the shortcoming of the original model to predict the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of binary polymer solutions. This shortcoming is mainly because the GEM-QC model does not consider the effect of free-volume, which is important in systems containing molecules with large size differences. The proposed modification is based on replacing the combinatorial term of the GEM-QC model by a term proposed by Kontogerogis et al., which includes the effect of the free-volume. The main advantage of the free volume generalized quasi-chemical (GEM-QC-FV) model over the original GEM-QC is its ability to predict the phase behaviour of binary polymer solutions with LCST behaviour. In addition, the free volume UNIQUAC (UNIQUAC-FV) model is used to correlate VLE and LLE experimental data for binary polymer solutions. The comparison of the results obtained from the GEM-QC-FV model and the UNIQUAC-FV model shows the superiority of the GEM-QC-FV model in correlating the VLE and LLE experimental data for binary polymer solutions.

A new two-parameter model based on the perturbation of a hard-sphere reference has been developed to correlate the activity coefficients of several amino acids and simple peptides in aqueous solutions. The hard-sphere equation of state used as the reference in the model was proposed recently by Ghotbi and Vera. The perturbation terms coupled with the reference hard-sphere equation of state are attributed to the dispersion forces and the dipole–dipole interactions. The Lennard-Jones and Keesom potential functions are used to represent the dispersion and dipole–dipole interactions, respectively. The results of the new model are compared with those obtained by other models. It is shown that the new model can more accurately correlate the activity coefficients of amino acids and peptides in comparison with the other available models in the literature. The model was also used to correlate the solubility of several amino acids in aqueous solutions. The results show that the model can accurately correlate the solubility of the experimental data over a wide range of temperatures with only two adjustable parameters. New values for Gibbs free energy change, Δg, and enthalpy change, Δh, of the solute, i.e., amino acid for transferring one mole of solute from a saturated solution to a hypothetical aqueous solution with an activity of one molal at temperature 298.15 K are also reported.

The predictions of the pair radial distribution function (RDF) at contact value, compressibility factor, and chemical potentials for binary and ternary hard-sphere mixtures obtained with the Barrio–Solana, the Santos et al., and the generalized Lebowitz mixing rules are compared using the Carnahan–Starling, Kolafa, and Khoshkbarchi–Vera one-component hard-sphere EOS. An expression for the pair RDF at contact value for Barrio–Solana mixing rule and the expressions for the chemical potentials in multicomponent hard-sphere fluids are derived. As a general rule, the equations of state obtained based on the generalized Lebowitz mixing rule predict better the pair RDF at contact value simulated data. The compressibility factor and the chemical potentials simulation results are generally better predicted by either the Santos et al. or the Barrio–Solana mixing rule, depending on the packing fraction, the composition, and the diameter ratio values. For a binary hard-sphere fluid with large diameter ratio, σ2/σ1=20, in the high-density region and at low mole fractions of the larger component, the Barrio–Solana mixing rule predicts the compressibility factor simulation results considerably more accurately than the other mixing rules studied here.

Gaseous solubilities of carbon dioxide (1), hydrogen sulfide (2), and their binary mixture (x(2) ≈ 0.2, 0.5, 0.8) have been measured in the ionic liquid 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethyl)sulfonylimide ([C(8)mim][Tf(2)N]) at temperatures ranging from (303.15 to 353.15) K and at pressures under 2 MPa. The observed PTx solubility data were used to obtain Henry's law constants and correlated by three models: (1) the simple Krichevsky-Kasarnovsky (KK) equation, (2) a model comprised of the extended Henry's law and the Pitzer's virial expansion for the excess Gibbs free energy, and (3) the generic Redlich-Kwong (RK) cubic equation of state proposed for gas-ionic liquid systems. The correlations from the three models show quite good consistency with the experimental data for IL/CO(2) and IL/H(2)S binary mixtures within experimental uncertainties. For IL/CO(2)/H(2)S ternary mixtures, the RK model shows the best correlation with the experimental data. The comparison showed that the solubility of H(2)S is about two times as great as that of CO(2) in the ionic liquid studied in this work. It was further found, by comparison of the experimental data of this study with those of previous reports, that the solubility of H(2)S in [C(n)mim][Tf(2)N] ILs increases as the number of carbon atoms in the alkyl substituent of methylimidazolium cation, n, increases. In addition, quantum chemical calculations at DFT/B3LYP level of theory using 6-311+G(d) and 6-311++G(2d,2p) basis sets were performed on the isolated systems studied in this work to provide explanations from a molecular point of view for the observed experimental trends.