Determinación del equilibrio líquido-vapor de agua, aromáticos y sus mezclas mediante simulación molecular

Abstract

Molecular simulation presents the advantage of providing a unified theoretical framework to model fluid properties for industrial applications. In this work we exploit this advantage to predict thermodynamic properties of pure water and aromatics and their mixtures at sub- and supercritical conditions. A comprehensive comparison of different intermolecular potentials has been carried out in order to analyze model predictions for pure component properties. In addition, an optimization of transferable parameters has been performed for an intermolecular potential for aromatics and water. In the case of water, an analysis and evaluation of the thermodynamic properties of a simple model has been performed. In this model, the electrostatic contributions are approximated by short-range interactions instead of the typical long-range Coulombic forces. On the whole, we found huge deviations with experimental data, such as a critical temperature value of 360K, 50% far away from the experimental value. Since, these calculations indicate the importance of including the electrostatic contribution in order to correctly model water, we also focus on reproducing critical properties from an optimization of the well known TIP4P and SPC/E water model parameters. Results obtained show that a better approximation to the critical point prediction is possible from the optimization of the SPC/E parameters, however, the good agreement with experiments for the original model at room conditions vanishes using the optimized parameters. On the other hand, thermodynamic property estimations of aromatic molecules are in good agreement with experimental data and we are able to reproduce saturation liquid densities, saturation pressures, vaporization enthalpies and liquid structure for pure compounds. Finally, in the case of mixtures, we applied the optimized set of parameters obtained for aromatics. The thermodynamic properties of binary aromatic-aromatic and aromatic water mixtures are analyzed over a wide range of temperatures and pressures. Deviations between the predicted and experimental values are found at low temperatures and high densities suggesting that a better optimization process needs to be performed for the pure systems or a more sophisticated intermolecular interaction potential is needed. Nevertheless, the estimations close to critical conditions are in good agreement with experimental data.