Phase equilibrium measurements and modelling of ternary system (carbon dioxide + ethanol + palmitic acid)

This work reports phase equilibrium measurements for the ternary system (palmitic acid + ethanol + CO₂). The motivation of this research relies on the fact that palmitic acid is the major compound of several vegetable oils. Besides, equilibrium data for palmitic acid in carbon dioxide using ethanol as co-solvent are scarce in the literature. Phase equilibrium experiments were performed using a high-pressure variable-volume view cell over the temperature range of (303 to 343) K and pressures up to 20 MPa and mole fraction of palmitic acid from 0.0199 to 0.2930. Vapour–liquid and solid–fluid transitions were visually observed for the system studied. The Peng–Robinson equation of state, with the classical van der Waals quadratic mixing rule was employed for thermodynamic modelling of the system investigated with a satisfactory agreement between experimental and calculated values.