[86] Transferable Potentials for Phase Equilibria. 8. United-Atom Description for Thiols, Sulfides, Disulfides, and Thiophene

N. Lubna, G. Kamath, J.J. Potoff, N. Rai, and J.I. Siepmann 

J. Phys. Chem. B 109, 24100-24107 (2005)

Publication Abstract

An extension of the transferable potentials for phase equilibria united-atom (TraPPE-UA) force field to thiol, sulfide, and disulfide functionalities and thiophene is presented. In the TraPPE-UA force field, nonbonded interactions are governed by a Lennard−Jones plus fixed point charge functional form. Partial charges are determined through a CHELPG analysis of electrostatic potential energy surfaces derived from ab initio calculations at the HF/6-31g+(d,p) level. The Lennard−Jones well depth and size parameters for four new interaction sites, S (thiols), S(sulfides), S(disulfides), and S(thiophene), were determined by fitting simulation data to pure-component vapor-equilibrium data for methanethiol, dimethyl sulfide, dimethyl disulfide, and thiophene, respectively. Configurational-bias Monte Carlo simulations in the grand canonical ensemble combined with histogram-reweighting methods were used to calculate the vapor−liquid coexistence curves for methanethiol, ethanethiol, 2-methyl-1-propanethiol, 2-methyl-2-propanethiol, 2-butanethiol, pentanethiol, octanethiol, dimethyl sulfide, diethyl sulfide, ethylmethyl sulfide, dimethyl disulfide, diethyl disulfide, and thiophene. Excellent agreement with experiment is achieved, with unsigned errors of less than 1% for saturated liquid densities and less than 3% for critical temperatures. The normal boiling points were predicted to within 1% of experiment in most cases, although for certain molecules (pentanethiol) deviations as large as 5% were found. Additional calculations were performed to determine the pressure−composition behavior of ethanethiol+n-butane at 373.15 K and the temperature−composition behavior of 1-propanethiol+n-hexane at 1.01 bar. In each case, a good reproduction of experimental vapor−liquid equilibrium separation factors is achieved; both of the coexistence curves are somewhat shifted because of overprediction of the pure-component vapor pressures.

Transferable Potentials for Phase Equilibria. 8. United-Atom Description for Thiols, Sulfides, Disulfides, and Thiophene