Refined Covolume Approach for Heavy Alkanes in Abel-Noble EOS at High Pressures

Abstract

A novel formulation was developed to accurately model volume behavior at very high pressures for heavy n-alkanes, based on excluded volume theory. This approach is crucial as several cubic equations of state become inadequate at pressures exceeding several thousand bars. The covolume formulation was applied to the Abel-Noble equation of state (EoS) for real gases to accurately model the specific volume of linear long-chain alkanes. It adjusts the compression limit volume of these heavy alkanes by tuning a small dimensionless parameter, epsilon (), which establishes a numerical relationship between pressure and excluded volume. At high pressure (from 50 MPa), the molar specific volumes of various aliphatic alkanes (CnH2n+2) between 30 and 250 °C were carefully calculated. The proposed formulation was undoubtedly improved by comparing it with experimental data from many peer-reviewed studies, keeping a square error limit of 3% for heavy n-alkanes. Additionally, we notice that attempts to use the presented EoS for low-carbon number hydrocarbons seem unreliable until the fluid is set under very high pressure.

Keywords

• covolume
• n-alkanes
• high pressure
• Abel-Noble EoS.

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