Phase Equilibrium Measurements and Data Correlation for the Ternary System Oleic Acid + 1-Octanol + Carbon Dioxide

A study of the high-pressure phase equilibria in the ternary system oleic acid/1octanol/supercritical CO2 was performed to obtain information for optimization of enzymatic synthesis of n-octyl oleate. Equilibrium data were measured at temperatures of 308.15, 323.15 and 343.15 K over a pressure range from 1 to 25 MPa. Two different apparatuses: a Variable Volume View Cell and a Batch Stirred Tank were used employing synthetic and static-analytic measurement methods, respectively. The measured solubility of dense CO2 in the binary liquid mixture oleic acid/1-octanol covered the range from 0.0781 to 0.7686 of CO2 molar fraction. CO2 solubility increased with increasing pressure up to 10 MPa. At higher pressures, no significant increase was observed. The Soave-Redlich-Kwong equation-of-state (SRK-EoS) with quadratic mixing rules was successfully used for data correlation in the whole P-T-x region studied.