Adsorption Thicknesses of Confined Pure and Mixing Fluids in Nanopores

In this paper, adsorption thicknesses of confined pure and mixing fluids in nanopores are quantitatively determined and their influential factors are specifically evaluated. First, a new analytical formulation is developed thermodynamically to calculate the adsorption thicknesses. Second, a new generalized equation of state (EOS), which considers the confinement effect-induced phenomena, is developed analytically for calculating the thermodynamic confined fluid phase behavior. Third, the modified model based on the generalized EOS and coupled with the parachor model is applied to calculate the vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE) and fluid adsorptions for the pure CO₂, alkanes of C₁-C₁₀, and two mixtures of CO₂-C₁₀H₂₂ and CH₄-C₁₀H₂₂ in nanopores. Finally, the following five important factors are studied to evaluate their effects on the adsorption thickness: temperature, pressure, pore radius, wall-effect distance, and feed gas-to-liquid ratio (FGLR). The proposed modified EOS is found to be accurate for the VLE and adsorption isotherm calculations. The adsorption thicknesses of confined pure or mixing alkanes are increased with the increasing carbon number but decreased with the temperature increase. For the alkanes of C₁-C₁₀, the degree of temperature effect is strengthened with the carbon number increase. Moreover, the adsorption thicknesses are significantly decreased with the pore radius increase until r_p = 50 nm, after which they have slight changes or are even constant at any pore radii. On the other hand, the wall-effect distance (δ_p) increase causes the adsorption thickness to be linearly increased at δ_p/ r_p ≥ 0.02. In addition, the effects of the FGLR and pressure on the adsorption thicknesses at the nanoscale are found to be negligible.