Thermodynamics Research Center / ThermoML | Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data

ABSTRACT

Activity coefficients at infinite dilution are reported for ten solutes (heptane, octane, nonane, decane, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, o-xylene, m-xylene, and p-xylene) in sulfolane at temperatures T ) (333.15 to 373.15) K. These data were measured with the help of gas-liquid chromatography (GC) in which sulfolane was used as the stationary phase. The results show good agreement with the activity coefficients at infinite dilution obtained from various methods in the literature. The temperature dependence of the activity coefficients found in the GC experiments could be confirmed using the excess enthalpy data. The present data can be used to determine and compare the selective effect caused by the addition of sulfolane to a given binary mixture in the separation processes such as extractive distillation and solvent extraction. The calculated selectivity suggests that both sulfolane and ionic liquid [HMIM+][BF4 -] can act as a good solvent in separating aromatic and aliphatic compounds.