Experimental Solubility Measurements of Fenoprofen in Supercritical Carbon Dioxide
Samyar Zabihi, Yaghoub Rahnama, Amir Sharafi, Fatemeh Borousan, Ali Zeinolabedini Hezave, Saeed Shirazian
Abstract
In the current investigation, the solubility of fenoprofen as a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug in supercritical CO2 (SC-CO2) is measured by employing a motorized PVT (pressure–volume–temperature) equilibrium cell. The solubility measurements were carried out in temperatures between 308 and 338 K and pressures between 12 and 40 MPa. The measured data reveals that the solubility of fenoprofen (mole fraction) lies between 2.01 × 10–5 and 4.20 × 10–3, depending on the thermodynamic conditions. Besides the experimental measurement of fenoprofen solubility, thermodynamic modeling of solubility using five different density-based semi-empirical correlations was carried out. The models were considered with only three fitting parameters, namely, Mendez-Santiago and Teja (MST), Bartle et al., Kumar and Johnston (K–J), Chrastil, and Garlapati and Madras models. The results revealed that among the examined models, the Bartle et al. model was the most accurate one with the lowest average absolute relative deviation percent (AARD %) of 6.58% for the studied drug, while the K–J model leads to poor prediction with an AARD % of 9.60%.