Phase Equilibria and Thermodynamics

Supercritical fluids occupy a peculiar physical state beyond the critical point of temperature and pressure where a substance is neither cleanly liquid nor gas, and engineers exploit that ambiguity to extract, purify, and process compounds with unusual selectivity and low residual toxicity. In biomedical contexts, supercritical carbon dioxide has drawn particular attention for isolating pharmaceutical actives, synthesizing drug-loaded polymers, and generating nanoparticles, precisely because it leaves no solvent trace and operates at temperatures gentle enough for sensitive biomolecules. Predicting when and how mixtures will separate into distinct phases under these conditions requires thermodynamic models such as Perturbed-Chain SAFT and equation-of-state frameworks, which researchers continue to refine using molecular simulation methods like Monte Carlo to capture the behavior of complex, asymmetric mixtures. Central open questions include accurately modeling systems that contain polymers or biological macromolecules, and scaling laboratory phase-equilibrium data into reliable industrial process designs without prohibitive experimental overhead.

Works

92,926

Total citations

1,937,057

Keywords

Supercritical FluidsExtractionEquation of StateThermodynamic PropertiesMonte Carlo SimulationPerturbed-Chain SAFT