Correlation of solubility data of ammonia in ionic liquids for gas separation processes using artificial neural networks

Artificial neural networks have been used for the correlation and prediction of solubility data of ammonia in ionic liquids. This solubility of ammonia is highly variable for different types of ionic liquids at the same temperature and pressure, its correlation and prediction is of special importance in the removal of ammonia from flue gases for which effective and efficient solvents are required. Nine binary ammonia + ionic liquids mixtures were considered in the study. Solubility data (P–T–x) of these systems were taken from the literature (208 data points for training and 50 data points for testing). The training variables are the temperature and the pressure of the binary systems (T, P), being the target variable the solubility of ammonia in the ionic liquid (x). The study shows that the neural network model is a good alternative method for the estimation of solubility for this type of mixtures. Absolute average deviations were below 5.6%, for each isothermal data set and overall absolute average deviations were below 3.0%. Only in the range of low solubility (below 0.2 in mole fraction) did predicted solubility give deviations higher than 10%.