Prediction of properties of new halogenated olefins using two group contribution approaches

The increasingly restrictive regulations for substances with high ozone depletion and global warming potentials are driving the search for new sustainable fluids with low environmental impact. Recent research works have pointed out the great potential of fluorine- and chlorine-based olefins as refrigerants and solvents, due to their environmentally-friendly features.

However there is a lack of experimental data of their thermophysical properties. In this work we present two models based on a group contribution method, using a classical approach and neural networks, to predict the critical temperature, critical pressure, normal boiling temperature, acentric factor, and ideal gas heat capacity of organic fluids containing chlorine and/or fluorine.

The accuracy of the prediction capacity of the two models is analyzed, and compared with equivalent methods in the literature. The models showed an average reduction of the absolute relative deviation for all the studied properties of more than 50%, compared to other methods. In addition, it was observed that the neural-network-based model yielded a better accuracy than the classical approach in the prediction of all the properties, except for the acentric factor, due to the lack of experimental data for this property.