Description:
In most chemical and petroleum industries, the density of aqueous electrolyte solutions is useful in the design and control of chemical processes. It is used in pipe sizing, pump calculations, heat transfer calculations, and other common problems. While standardized values for the densities of many substances are readily available, there are many industrial operations, such as hydraulic fracturing, that produce side products with unknown densities. Hence, the development of a method to calculate the densities of unknown products is very important to chemical manufacturing companies.
The disclosed technology is a computer-implemented model that consists of engineering expressions to predict the densities of aqueous brine solutions at 25°C and one atmospheric pressure. The researcher has invented a predictive model for solution density that can be used in engineering calculations using electrolyte concentrations and their molar mass.
Reference Number: D-1244
Market Applications:
• Water treatment
• Useful in chemical and petroleum industries to determine the density of an electrolytic solution
Features, Benefits & Advantages:
• Ability to predict density of an aqueous electrolyte solution
• Ability to estimate electrolyte mass content from density measurements
• Ability to predict the solution density for Engineering calculations without additional measurement
Intellectual Property:
A U.S. Provisional Patent, serial number 62/237,974 was filed on 10/06/15.
Development Stage:
The inventors have produced and tested the invention. The next work is to extend the model to cover organic electrolytes.
Researchers:
Chau-Chuyn Chen, Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Whitacre College of Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79415
Nguyen H. B. Nguyen, MS graduate student, Department of Chemical Engineering, Whitacre College of Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX
Keywords: Electrolyte Density Estimation, Relationship between solution density and excess mass fraction of electrolytes, Calculation of electrolyte solutions at ambient conditions, Predicting densities, Density Estimation for Brine Solutions, Density Estimation from Electrolyte Concentration