Modeling thermodynamic properties of aqueous single‐solute and multi‐solute sugar solutions with PC‐SAFT

The Perturbed‐Chain Statistical Association Fluid Theory is applied to simultaneously describe various thermodynamic properties (solution density, osmotic coefficient, solubility) of aqueous solutions containing a monosaccharide or a disaccharide. The 13 sugars considered within this work are: glucose, fructose, fucose, xylose, maltose, mannitol, mannose, sorbitol, xylitol, galactose, lactose, trehalose, and sucrose. Four adjustable parameters (three pure‐sugar parameters and a k ij between sugar and water that was allowed to depend linearly on temperature) were obtained from solution densities and osmotic coefficients of binary sugar/water solutions at 298.15 K available in literature. Using these parameters, the sugar solubility in water and in ethanol could be predicted satisfactorily. Further, osmotic coefficients and solubility in aqueous solutions containing two solutes (sugar/sugar, sugar/salt) were predicted (no additional k ij parameters between the two solutes) reasonably. The model was also applied to predict the solubility of a sugar in a solvent mixture (e.g., water/ethanol) without additional fitting parameters. © 2013 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J , 59: 4794–4805, 2013