Vapor-liquid equilibrium of acid gases with imidazolium-based ionic liquids using the UMR-PRU model

Abstract

The UMR-PRU group contribution equation of state (EoS), which couples the Peng-Robinson EoS with UNIFAC via the Universal Mixing Rules, is extended to pure imidazolium-based ionic liquids (ILs), as well as to their mixtures with CO₂ and H₂S. The studied ILs consist of alkyl-methylimidazolium cations and tetrafluoroborate, hexafluorophosphate and bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide anions. The EoS parameters of pure ionic liquids, are determined by fitting experimental vapor pressure and liquid density data. For the extension of UMR-PRU to binary CO₂/IL and H₂S/IL mixtures, the model parameters are determined by fitting experimental binary vapor-liquid equilibrium data of acid gases with ionic liquids. For comparison, the Peng-Robinson coupled with the conventional van der Waals one-fluid mixing rules (vdW1f) is also applied to the same systems, using adjustable attractive and co-volume cross interaction parameter. It is shown that Peng-Robinson accurately describes pure ionic liquid vapor pressures and liquid densities, while UMR-PRU yields very satisfactory vapor-liquid equilibrium results for binary and ternary mixtures containing ILs and acid gases. Overall, UMR-PRU yields much better results than Peng-Robinson coupled with the vdW1f mixing rules, which indicates the superiority of the UMR mixing rules over the vdW1f ones.