Phase equilibrium for surfactant Ls-54 in liquid CO(2) with water and solubility estimation using the Peng-Robinson equation of state.

It is known that the commercial surfactant Dehypon® Ls-54 is soluble in supercritical CO(2) and that it enables formation of water-in-CO(2) microemulsions. In this work we observed phase equilibrium for the Ls-54/CO(2) and Ls-54/water/CO(2) systems in the liquid CO(2) region, from 278.15 - 298.15 K. In addition, the Peng-Robinson equation of state (PREOS) was used to model the phase behavior of Ls-54/CO(2) binary system as well as to estimate water solubilities in CO(2). Ls-54 in CO(2) can have solubilities as high as 0.086 M at 278.15 K and 15.2 MPa. The stability of the microemulsion decreases with increasing concentration of water, and lower temperatures favor increased solubility of water into the one-phase microemulsion. The PREOS model showed satisfactory agreement with the experimental data for both Ls-54/CO(2) and water/CO(2) systems.