North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Aggie Digital Collections and Scholarship Theses Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2014 Freezing Curve Measurements For Hydrocarbon Mixtures Derrick Amoabeng North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digital.library.ncat.edu/theses Recommended Citation Amoabeng, Derrick, "Freezing Curve Measurements For Hydrocarbon Mixtures" (2014). Theses. 349. https://digital.library.ncat.edu/theses/349 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at Aggie Digital Collections and Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of Aggie Digital Collections and Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Freezing Curve Measurements for Hydrocarbon Mixtures Derrick Amoabeng North Carolina A&T State University A thesis submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE Department: Chemical, Biological and Bioengineering Major: Chemical Engineering Major Professor: Dr. Vinayak N. Kabadi Greensboro, North Carolina 2014 i The Graduate School North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University This is to certify that the Master’s Thesis of Derrick Amoabeng has met the thesis requirements of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Greensboro, North Carolina 2014 Approved by: Dr. Vinayak Kabadi Dr. Shamsuddin Ilias Major Professor Committee Member Dr. John P. Kizito Dr. Stephen Knisley Committee Member Department Chairperson Dr. Sanjiv Sarin Dean, The Graduate School ii © Copyright by Derrick Amoabeng 2014 iii Biographical Sketch Derrick Amoabeng was born in Akim-Oda, Ghana on the 31st of May 1988. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology – KNUST in Ghana in the year 2011. He is a candidate for the Master of Science degree in Chemical Engineering in North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, North Carolina. iv Acknowledgements I first of all want to thank the almighty God for how far He has brought me. He made all things possible. I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Vinayak Kabadi, for his continued support, encouragement, supervision and useful suggestion throughout this research work. His continued dedication to instilling discipline in me and his guidance enabled me to complete my work successfully. I am also thankful to my committee members, Dr. Vinayak N. Kabadi, Dr. John P. Kizito, Dr. Shamsuddin Ilias for being my committee members. I would also like to thank my colleagues, Mr. Emmanuel Ogbole and Mr. Thomas Anison for sharing research ideas and for their continued support, especially throughout the difficult times. Lastly, I would like to acknowledge NASA and Department of Chemical, Biological and Bio-engineering for providing financial support for this research. v Table of Contents List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... viii Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 2 CHAPTER 1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 3 CHAPTER 2 Literature Review ..................................................................................................... 6 2.1 Solid-Liquid Equilibrium for Hydrocarbon Mixtures ....................................................... 6 2.1.1 Literature Review on Experimental Methods and Data: ......................................... 6 2.1.2 Thermodynamic Modeling of Solid-Liquid Equilibrium: ..................................... 11 2.1.3 Activity Coefficient Models: ................................................................................. 13 2.1.4 Non-Random Two Liquid-NRTL: ........................................................................ 13 2.1.5 UNIQUAC: ............................................................................................................ 14 2.1.6 Regular Solution Theory: ...................................................................................... 16 2.1.7 Wilson’s Equation: ................................................................................................ 17 2.1.8 UNIFAC: ............................................................................................................... 17 CHAPTER 3 Methodology........................................................................................................... 21 3.1 Experimental Setup .......................................................................................................... 21 3.1.1 Chemical and Materials: ........................................................................................ 21 3.2 Description of Gas Chromatograph and Environmental Chamber: ................................. 21 3.2.1 Gas Chromatography Method: .............................................................................. 24 3.2.2 Calibration of Gas Chromatograph (GC) – Flame Ionization Detector (FID) ...... 26 3.3 Experimental Procedure ................................................................................................... 32 3.3.1 Experimental Procedure for Pure Dodecane: ........................................................ 32 3.3.2 Experimental Procedure for Mixture of Decane and Dodecane: ........................... 33 vi CHAPTER 4 Results .................................................................................................................... 36 4.1 Freezing and Melting Curves for Pure Dodecane ............................................................ 36 4.2 Freezing and Melting Curves for Pure Decane ................................................................ 37 4.3 Freezing and Melting Curves for Mixtures of Decane (1) and Dodecane (2) ................. 38 4.4 Freezing and Melting Curves for a Mixture of Decane, Dodecane and Hexadecane ...... 44 4.5 Freezing and Melting Curves for Mixtures of Decane (1) and Dodecane (2) ................. 46 CHAPTER 5 Discussion and Future Research ............................................................................. 48 5.1 Freezing and Melting Curves for Pure Dodecane ............................................................ 48 5.2 Freezing and Melting Curves of Decane, Dodecane and Hexadecane ............................ 49 5.3 Freezing and Melting for Binary Mixture of Decane and Dodecane .............................. 49 References ..................................................................................................................................... 51 Appendix A ................................................................................................................................... 58 Appendix B ................................................................................................................................... 70 vii List of Figures Figure 2-1, Schematic diagram of high pressure view cell system................................................. 8 Figure 3-1, The Experimental Setup ............................................................................................. 22 Figure 3-2, Gas chromatogram from peak-simple software ......................................................... 27 Figure 4-1, Freezing and melting temperature profile for pure dodecane .................................... 36 Figure 4-2, Temperature profile for pure decane (experiment by Mohammed Ali) ..................... 37 Figure 4-3, Temperature profile for mixture of decane-dodecane with x1 = 0.15 ........................ 39 Figure 4-4, Temperature profile for mixture of decane-dodecane with x1 = 0.25 ........................ 40 Figure 4-5, Temperature profile for mixture of decane-dodecane with x1 = 0.54 (experiment by Mohammed Ali) ............................................................................................................................ 41 Figure 4-6, Temperature profile for mixture of decane-dodecane with x1 = 0.80 ........................ 42 Figure 4-7, Temperature profile for mixture of decane-dodecane with x1 = 0.84 ........................ 43 Figure 4-8, Temperature profile for mixture of decane-dodecane with x1 = 0.90 ........................ 44 Figure 4-9, Temperature profile for mixture of equal volume of decane, dodecane and hexadecane (experiment by Mohammed Ali) ............................................................................... 45 Figure 4-10, Binary phase diagram for Decane and Dodecane .................................................... 47 viii List of Tables Table 3-1, Component Window:................................................................................................... 25 Table 3-2, Calibration of GC-FID with Decane, Dodecane and Hexadecane-Set 1 ..................... 28 Table 3-3, Calibration of GC-FID with Decane, Dodecane and Hexadecane-Set 2 ..................... 30 Table 3-4, Calibration of GC-FID with Decane, Dodecane and Hexadecane .............................. 32 Table 4-1, Sample binary systems for decane and dodecane .......................................................