SUPERCRITICAL ADSORPTION IN SMALL PORES

Continuum mechanics has been used to describe supercritical adsorption of krypton in carbon molecular sieves as reported by Findenegg et al. (Ger. Chem. Eng. 6, 80 (1983)) and Fischer et al. (Ger. Chem. Eng. 6, 84 (1983)). The adsorption might be better described as densification resulting from the long-range intermolecular forces between krypton and carbon. This represents an extension of continuum mechanics to a microscale system in which the average pore diameters were less than four times the diameter of the krypton molecule. Supercritical adsorption of methane in porous carbon also has been explored with this analysis. Storage capacity is the principal problem limiting natural gas as a viable alternative vehicle fuel. © 1993 Academic Press, Inc.