Energy & Fuels, Vol.22, No.1, 398-401, 2008
Air-water partitioning of gasoline components in the presence of sodium chloride
We have measured the Henry's constants of several components of gasoline, including methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE), toluene, ethylbenzene, and o-xylene in pure water and in 0.5 and 1.0 m solutions of sodium chloride. The data were obtained at four temperatures between 313 and 343 K using differential headspace gas chromatography. We have also correlated our data using a previously derived expression based on dilute solution theory. The expression contains one salt-effect parameter that is obtained by regressing data at one salt concentration, thus allowing extrapolation to other salt concentrations. We show that the salt-effect parameter can be replaced by published values of the Setchenov constant for the system of interest. It has been suggested that the salt effect should increase with the size of the volatile organic compound, at least within a homologous series of compounds. However, our data do not validate this hypothesis.