Capillary Condensation of Binary and Ternary Mixtures of n-Pentane-Isopentane-CO2 in Nanopores: An Experimental Study on the Effects of Composition and Equilibrium

Confinement in nanopores can significantly impact the chemical and physical behavior of fluids. While some quantitative understanding is available for how pure fluids behave in nanopores, there is little such insight for mixtures. This study aims to shed light on how nanoporosity impacts the phase behavior and composition of confined mixtures through comparison of the effects of static and dynamic equilibrium on experimentally measured isotherms and chromatographic analysis of the experimental fluids. To this end, a novel gravimetric apparatus is introduced and validated. Unlike apparatuses that have been previously used to study the confinement-induced phase behavior of fluids, this apparatus employs a gravimetric technique capable of discerning phase transitions in a wide variety of nanoporous media under both static and dynamic conditions. The apparatus was successfully validated against data in the literature for pure carbon dioxide and n-pentane. Then, isotherms were generated for binary mixtures of carbon dioxide and n pentane using static and flow-through methods. Finally, two ternary mixtures of carbon dioxide, n-pentane, and isopentane were measured using the static method. While the equilibrium time was found important for determination of confined phase transitions, flow rate in the dynamic method was not found to affect the confined phase behavior. For all measurements, the results indicate qualitative transferability of the bulk phase behavior to the confined fluid.