INVESTIGATION OF THE THERMODYNAMIC IDEALITY OF MIXTURES OF POLYCYCLIC AROMATIC HYDROCARBONS

摘要

Petroleum is a highly complex mixture; rarely are fuels or residues of fuel processing systems pure compounds. Tarry contaminants at former manufactured gas plant sites contain a plethora of compounds, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Few data are available in the literature on controlled mixtures of PAH, and what few data exist show a vast range of experimental correlations, highlighting the need to study the behavior of these mixtures. There are many relationships that describe the thermodynamic behavior of multi-phase and multi-component mixtures; Raoult's law, an idealized approximation, is often used to detail the contribution of individual components of a mixture to the total pressure exerted by the system. The majority of data available on the vapor pressures of such complex organic mixtures originates in the petrochemical industry, and focus on mixtures present in crude oil derivatives. Although such results are well represented in empirical correlations, they are somewhat application-specific. This experimental work focuses on the vapor pressures of binary and multi-component mixtures of PAH using the isothermal Knudsen effusion technique.