High pressure solubility of CO2 in non-fluorinated phosphonium-based ionic liquids

High pressure solubility of carbon dioxide in three phosphonium-based ionic liquids has been measured experimentally. A synthetic method was used to measure vapor–liquid, vapor–liquid–liquid and liquid–liquid equilibria of carbon dioxide in the ionic liquids trihexyltetradecylphosphonium bromide [thtdp][Br], trihexyltetradecylphosphonium dicyanamide [thtdp][dca] and trihexyltetradecylphosphonium bis(2,4,4-trime-thylpentyl)phosphinate [thtdp][phos] for a temperature range of 271–363 K and up to 90 MPa. Furthermore, the densities and viscosities of these ILs have been measured in a temperature range of 293–363 K. The solubility of carbon dioxide in these ILs is (on mole fraction basis) significantly larger than most of the commonly used fluorinated imidazolium ionic liquids. The latter statement, however, does not hold for the [Br] and [dca] based IL if the solubility is compared on molality (mole/mass solvent) basis, where the solubility differences among physical ILs tends to vanish indicating a strong molecular weight effect. The solubility of carbon dioxide in [thtdp][phos], both on mole fraction and molality basis, is among the highest compared to all the other physical ILs reported so far in the literature. The Peng–Robinson equation of state in combination with Wong–Sandler mixing rules incorporating the NRTL Gibbs excess energy model was applied to represent the experimental data with acceptable accuracy.