Modelling carbon dioxide solubility in ionic liquids

Solubility information for CO2 in different ionic liquids, ILs, in part can potentially be used to select a specific IL for the separation of CO2 from hydrocarbon fluids. Unfortunately, not all CO2IL systems have been experimentally described at similar temperatures and pressures; therefore, a direct comparison of performance by process simulation is not always possible. In the extreme cases, the design of a CO2 separation process may require predicting the CO2IL equilibria for which there are no available solubility data. To address the need for this information, a semi-empirical correlation was developed to estimate the dissolution of CO2 in CO2IL solvent systems. The theoretical COSMORS calculation method was used to calculate the chemical potential of CO2 in a wide variety of ILs and the SoaveRedlichKwong equation was used to calculate the fugacity coefficient of the CO2 vapour phase. The model was correlated with available literature data, yielding an average error of AAR=23% and small bias. (c) 2012 Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering