806 J. Chem. Eng.

Data 1996, 41, 806-808

Surface Tension of Aqueous Solutions of Diethanolamine and

Triethanolamine from 25 °C to 50 °C

Gonzalo Vázquez, Estrella Alvarez,*,† Raquel Rendo, Eva Romero, and José M. Navaza
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15706 Santiago, Spain

The surface tension of aqueous solutions of diethanolamine and triethanolamine was measured over the
entire concentration range at temperatures of 25 °C to 50 °C. The experimental values were correlated
with temperature and with mole fraction. The maximum deviation was in both cases always less than
0.5%.

Introduction Table 1. Surface Tension of Diethanolamine (A) +

Water (B)
Aqueous solutions of alkanolamines such as monoeth-
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anolamine (MEA), diethanolamine (DEA), triethanolamine σ/mN m-1 at t/°C

(TEA), N-methyldiethanolamine (MDEA), and 2-amino-2- xA 25 30 35 40 45 50
methyl-1-propanol (AMP) are good solvents for the removal 0.000 72.01 71.21 70.42 69.52 68.84 67.92
of acid gases such CO2 and H2S from the gas streams of 0.019 66.70 65.89 65.10 64.19 63.49 62.56
many processes in the natural gas, ammonia synthesis, and 0.041 63.25 62.46 61.65 60.74 60.04 59.10
some chemical industries (Astarita et al., 1983). Aqueous 0.068 60.75 59.95 59.15 58.25 57.54 56.60
solutions of a tertiary amine like MDEA or TEA are used 0.102 58.82 58.03 57.23 56.32 55.61 54.68
0.146 57.20 56.42 55.62 54.71 54.01 53.07
for selective removal of H2S in the presence of CO2, while 0.204 55.75 54.96 54.17 53.26 52.56 51.63
DEA is a common solvent for removal of CO2 (Hagewiesche 0.285 54.32 53.55 52.74 51.83 51.13 50.19
et al., 1995; Rangwala et al., 1992). The reaction between 0.407 52.72 51.95 51.14 50.24 49.54 48.61
CO2 and aqueous solutions of alkanolamines has also been 0.606 50.65 49.89 49.10 48.18 47.48 46.55
used for the determination of interfacial areas in a me- 1.000 47.21 46.46 45.66 44.75 44.05 43.12
chanically agitated reactor and a bubble column (Oyervaar Table 2. Surface Tension of Triethanolamine (A) +
et al., 1990). Water (B)
The physical properties of aqueous solutions of these
σ/mN m-1 at t/°C
alkanolamines, such as surface tension, are important for
the design of acid gas treatment equipment and for xA 25 30 35 40 45 50
interpreting other physicochemical properties of this sys- 0.000 72.01 71.21 70.42 69.52 68.84 67.92
tem such as the reaction kinetics of CO2 with aqueous 0.013 65.85 65.05 64.26 63.35 62.67 61.74
amine solutions. The objective of this work was to measure 0.029 61.32 60.52 59.73 58.82 58.13 57.21
the surface tension of the binary aqueous solutions of DEA 0.049 57.80 57.00 56.20 55.31 54.62 53.69
0.074 55.10 54.30 53.51 52.61 51.91 50.99
and of TEA over the entire concentration range at tem- 0.108 52.88 52.08 51.29 50.37 49.68 48.76
peratures of 25 °C to 50 °C. 0.153 51.03 50.23 49.44 48.53 47.84 46.92
0.220 49.48 48.68 47.89 46.99 46.30 45.37
Experimental Section 0.326 48.16 47.36 46.57 45.66 44.98 44.05
0.521 47.00 46.21 45.42 44.52 43.83 42.90
Aqueous solutions of diethanolamine and triethanol- 1.000 45.95 45.16 44.38 43.48 42.80 41.88
amine were prepared with distilled-deionized water. Al-
kanolamines were Merck products of nominal purity >98% Table 3. Surface Tension Parameters K1 and K2 (Eq 1)
for the DEA and >99% for the TEA. All the solutions were for Aqueous Alkanolamine Mixtures
prepared by mass with deviations of less than 0.3% from organic
the desired concentration. The values of the mole fraction, component (A) xA K1 K2 xA K1 K2
xA, correspond for all mixtures to 0-100 mass %, at 10 diethanolamine 0.000 76.0114 0.1609 0.204 55.1209 0.1634
mass % intervals, of DEA and TEA. 0.019 69.8596 0.1613 0.285 53.5757 0.1637
Surface tension was determined at 5 deg intervals, 0.041 65.3409 0.1618 0.407 52.2662 0.1640
between 25 °C and 50 °C, using a Traube stalagmometer 0.068 61.8319 0.1622 0.606 51.1533 0.1644
0.102 59.1505 0.1625 1.000 50.0795 0.1648
and a Prolabo tensiometer, which employs the Wilhemy 0.146 56.9394 0.1629
plate principle (Lin et al., 1990; Van der Bogaert and Joos, triethanolamine 0.000 76.0114 0.1609 0.153 59.7938 0.1625
1980). The detailed experimental procedure has been 0.013 70.6786 0.1612 0.220 58.3841 0.1627
described elsewhere (Vázquez et al., 1995a, 1995b). In 0.029 67.2534 0.1614 0.326 56.8157 0.1629
general, each surface tension value reported was an aver- 0.049 64.7652 0.1617 0.521 54.7309 0.1630
age of 5 to 10 measurements, where the maximum devia- 0.074 62.8468 0.1620 1.000 51.3248 0.1633
0.108 61.2490 0.1622
tions from the average value were always less than 0.4%.
The precision of the temperature control was (0.05 deg Results and Discussion
and the accuracy of the measurements was (0.05 mN m-1.
Tables 1 and 2 list the measured surface tensions of DEA
+ water and TEA + water of various mole fractions at each
* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
† Present address: Department of Chemical Engineering, E.T.S.E.I., temperature. In the systems studied surface tension
University of Vigo, Spain. E-mail: ealvarez@uvigo.es. decreased with increasing temperature for any given mole

S0021-9568(96)00012-X CCC: $12.00 © 1996 American Chemical Society

 Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data, Vol. 41, No. 4, 1996 807

Figure 3. Fitted parameter b (eq 2) as a function of tempera-

Figure 1. Surface tension of diethanolamine (A) + water (B) as ture: (9) diethanolamine; (1) triethanolamine.
a function of temperature at different mole fractions of DEA: (9)
water; (1) xA ) 0.041; (O) xA ) 0.102; (2) xA ) 0.204; (0) xA )
0.407; (b) xA ) 1.000; (s) eq 1.

Figure 4. Surface tension of triethanolamine + water plotted

against the mole fraction of alkanolamine, xA: (b) experimental,
25 °C; (---) calculated, 25 °C; (0) experimental, 35 °C; (- - -)
Figure 2. Fitted parameter a (eq 2) as a function of tempera- calculated, 35 °C; (1) experimental, 45 °C; (s) calculated, 45 °C.
ture: (9) diethanolamine; (1) triethanolamine.
shows the results for DEA + water as an example. The
fraction of alkanolamine. The surface tensions of the pure fitted values of K1 and K2 are listed in Table 3.
components can be correlated with temperature by fitting
the following linear expression (Jasper, 1972). For a given temperature, the surface tension of the
mixtures studied decreased as the alkanolamine concentra-
σ/mN‚m-1 ) K1 - K2t/°C (1) tion increased. This trend is nonlinear, the change in
surface tension caused by a given change in alkanolamine
Equation 1 also fitted the data of Tables 1 and 2 for each concentration being larger at low concentrations than at
concentration, with deviations less than 0.5%. Figure 1 high concentrations. Fitting the equation
808 Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data, Vol. 41, No. 4, 1996

tensions of pure water and pure alkanolamine, respectively,

and xw and xA are the mole fractions of water and alkanol-
amine). The values of the fitted parameters a and b in eq
2 are a linear function of the temperature for each
alkanolamine (see Figures 2 and 3). Figure 4 shows, by
way of example, the measured surface tensions for TEA +
water in comparison with those calculated by means of eq
2. The deviations are less than 0.2% in all such plots.
In Figure 5 the values of surface tension for DEA +
water at 40 °C reported in this paper were compared with
experimental values obtained by other researchers (Rinker
et al., 1994).
The surface tension deviation is defined as the difference
between the surface tension of the mixture and those
expected on the basis of a mole fraction average,

δσ ) σ - (σwxw + σAxA) (3)

Plotting δσ against the mole fraction of the amine (Figure

6) shows that the deviation from a mole fraction average
is larger for the tertiary amine than for the secondary
amine.

Literature Cited
Figure 5. Surface tension of diethanolamine + water, at 40 °C,
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Figure 6. Surface tension deviation, δσ, as a function of the mole

fraction of alkanolamine, xA: (O) diethanolamine, 25 °C; (2)
diethanolamine, 50 °C; (b) triethanolamine, 25 °C; (0) triethanol- Received for review January 12, 1996. Revised manuscript received
March 18, 1996. Accepted April 11, 1996.X This work was partially
amine, 50 °C; (s) calculated from eqs 2 and 3.
financed by the DGICYT (Spain) (Grant PB94-0626).
σ - σw
σw - σA
) 1+( axw
x
1 - bxw A ) (2) JE960012T

to the data for each solute (where σw and σA are the surface X Abstract published in Advance ACS Abstracts, May 15, 1996.