title: Adsorption of liquid mixtures on silicalite-1 zeolite: a density-bottle method.
abstract: A technique that measures the effective density of a zeolite after adsorption from the liquid phase was developed to measure the absolute amounts of liquid mixtures adsorbed on zeolites without using a nonadsorbing solvent. Since the fugacities of the adsorbing components in solution can be dramatically different with or without the addition of a nonadsorbing solvent, this technique measures mixture isotherms that can be used for analyzing pervaporation through zeolite membranes. A nonideal solution, methanol/acetone, was used as an example to show that its adsorption isotherms on silicalite-1 zeolite at 294 K differ dramatically from those measured with the nonadsorbing solvent method. The methanol/acetone fugacity ratio is different for the two methods because of different concentrations in the liquid phase. Methanol preferentially adsorbs on silicalite-1 at low methanol concentrations and acetone preferentially adsorbs at high methanol concentrations. The density bottle method was used to show that n-hexane preferentially adsorbs from n-hexane/3-methylpentane liquid mixtures, and at high n-hexane concentrations, essentially no 3-methylpentane adsorbs, as has been predicted previously by simulations. A larger molecule, 2,2-dimethylbutane, adsorbed so slowly at 294 K that silicalite had only 16% of saturation coverage after 370 h, but it was saturated after 1650 h; at 423 K, saturation was obtained in less than 24 h.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0424, USA.
authors.forename: Miao
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: John L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Falconer
authors.forename: Richard D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Noble