A new method for estimating solubility of fatty acids, esters, and triglycerides in supercritical carbon dioxide

A method to predict solubility of fat compounds (fatty acids, fatty acid es ters, and triglycerides) in supercritical CO2 in the absence of experimenta l data is presented. The method is based on the idea of group contribution, so only knowledge about the chemical structure of the substance is needed to predict its solubility in CO2. Chrastil's equation was used to correlate the solubilities of fatty acids, fatty acid esters, and triglycerides in C O2. The three parameters determined from fitting of the data were calculate d. A nonlinear fit routine was used to determine the chemical group contrib utions to the three parameters. Analysis of the results shows that it is po ssible to correlate the parameters of Chrastil's equation to molecular grou ps. The average deviation from the experimental data was 8%.