High-Pressure Phase Equilibria of Squalene + Carbon Dioxide: New Data and Thermodynamic Modeling

The importance of squalene in both the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries motivated the development of new technologies to purify squalene from different sources, one of such technologies being the supercritical fluid extraction using carbon dioxide (CO2). Knowledge of phase equilibria behavior is essential for the design of these processes. In this work, vapor−liquid equilibria of the binary system squalene + CO2 at high pressures (10 to 35) MPa and at T = (313, 323, and 333) K were measured using a variable-volume view cell. Experimental compositions of both the liquid and vapor phases were compared with previous data available in the literature. Additionally, the results obtained in this work were employed to evaluate the capability of a group contribution based equation of state in the phase equilibria modeling of the squalene + CO2 mixture.