The Solubility of Hydrocarbon Gases in Glassy Polymers: Fractal Modeling

Abstract

This work describes the fractal modeling of the solubility of n-alkanes, n-alkenes, methylacetylene, allene, ethylacetylene, and butadiene hydrocarbon gases in glassy poly(vinyltrimethylsilane) (PVTMS). The proposed equation represents satisfactorily the solubility coefficients of the hydrocarbon gases in glassy PVTMS as a function of the fractal dimension of the polymer and the effective diameter of a gas penetrant molecule. It is found that the calculated solubility coefficients have a good correlation with the experimental data. The proposed model can predict the solubility of hydrocarbon gases in glassy polymers.