Quasi-equilibrium phase coexistence in single component supercritical fluids
SCIE
SCOPUS
- Title
- Quasi-equilibrium phase coexistence in single component supercritical fluids
- Authors
- LEE, SEUNG TAEK; LEE, JUHO; KIM, YEONG UK; YUN, GUNSU; KIM, DONG EON; JEONG, SEOK YONG
- Date Issued
- 2021-07
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Abstract
- In their supercritical state simple fluids are generally thought to assume a homogeneous phase throughout. Lee et al. find that liquid droplets temporarily formed in a supercritical background after sub-critical injection can survive for a surprisingly long time.
In their supercritical state simple fluids are generally thought to assume a homogeneous phase throughout all combinations of pressures and temperatures, although various response functions or transport properties may exhibit anomalous behavior, characterizing a state point as either more gas-like or liquid-like, respectively. While a large body of results has been compiled in the last two decades regarding the details of the supercritical phase in thermodynamic equilibrium, far less studies have been dedicated to out-of-equilibrium situations that nevertheless occur along with the handling of substances such as carbon dioxide or Argon. Here we consider successive compression-expansion cycles of equal amounts of Argon injected into a high-pressure chamber, traversing the critical pressure at two times the critical temperature. Due to expansion cooling, the fluid temporarily becomes sub-critical, and light scattering experiments show the formation of sub-micron-sized droplets and nanometer-scale clusters, both of which are distinct from spontaneous density fluctuations of the supercritical background and persist for a surprisingly long time. A kinetic rate model of the exchange of liquid droplets with the smaller clusters can explain this behavior. Our results indicate non-equilibrium aspects of supercritical fluids that may prove important for their processing in industrial applications.
- URI
- https://oasis.postech.ac.kr/handle/2014.oak/110527
- DOI
- 10.1038/s41467-021-24895-y
- ISSN
- 2041-1723
- Article Type
- Article
- Citation
- Nature Communications, vol. 12, no. 1, 2021-07
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