(422e) Solubility of Surfactant Templates in Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Solutions

Templates are key to development of porous matrices with tailored pore size distribution and orientation. This presentation focuses on high surface area catalyst synthesis. A template that is soluble in supercritical carbon dioxide with or withoud an entrainer can be removed from the porous catalyst once the pore structure is formed. Therefore, solubilities non-ionic surfactants, Triton X-114 and Tergitol 15-S-9, are presented here. The solubility of each compound is determined using a variable volume, visual cell cloud point phase behavior set-up.

Supercritical carbon dioxide plus entrainer (alcohols) is used as the solvent. The results are modeled using PRSV and extended to other experimental condition.

The experimental mixtures range from 93.2 mol% to 97.6 mol% carbon dioxide with Triton X-114 compositions ranging from 1.93 e-4 mol% to 4.56 e-4 mol%. Observed cloud point pressures range from 95.6 bar to 173.1 bar at temperatures ranging from 35oC to 60oC.