Vapour pressure measurements and prediction for heavy esters

In order to describe the phase behaviour of drilling fluids with gases in down hole conditions, the pure component properties must be well known. The new formulations are often based on heavy esters. This paper focuses on the experimental measurements of the vapour pressure of a number of selected esters. The results are similar to those of n-alkanes with identical molecular weight. Using the results collected, several predictive methods are tested in order to evaluate what method is most adapted to the type of components used. It appears that the best method of all is that proposed by Jensen et al.((7)) If a cubic equation is used with the Somayajulu method for predicting the critical parameters, acceptable results are obtained as well. (C) 2001 Academic Press.