Supercritical extraction process is a technique which has been increasingly
applied in various industries in recent years. Solubility determination in
supercritical region is the key feature for this process. However, high
expenses and time consuming experiments for this task obligates the need for
process modeling. In this study, a thermodynamic model has been proposed to
correlate the solubility of solid hydrocarbons, namely, 1-hexadecanol,
1-octadecanol, anthracene, benzoin, fluorene, hexamethylbenze-ne, mandelic
acid, naphtalene, palmitic acid, phenanthrene, propyl 4-hydroxy-benzoate,
pyrene and stearic acid in supercritical conditions, using Peng-Robinson
(PR) and Soave-Redlich-Kwong (SRK) equations of state with one-parameter van
der Waals (vdW1) and two-parameters (vdW2) and covolume dependent (CVD)
mixing rules. For the above combination of equations of state and mixing
rules, binary interaction parameters have been determined, utilizing the
differential evolution optimization strategy. The validity of the model has
been assessed by comparing the experimental solubility data with the results
obtained from thermodynamic model based on Average Absolute Relative
Deviation percent (AARD %). An empirical correlation is proposed for the
correlation of the solid solubilities in supercritical CO2. For each
compound, the constants of this equation are obtained in such a manner to
correlate the solubility at different temperatures and pressures.