COSMO-RS-based assessment of thermodynamic tools in predicting the polar and non-polar solvents efficiency in vegetable oil extraction.

Context: One of the prevalent methods for evaluating separation performance is to predict the interactions of solvent and solute molecules. The infinite dilution activity coefficient, Gibbs free energy, and sigma profiles provided insights into the solubilization of a solute and revealed the intensity of the solution's molecular interactions. The effective thermodynamic tools (infinite dilution activity coefficient, Gibbs free energy) were evaluated for predicting the efficiency of 18 polar and non-polar organic solvents in rubber seed oil (RSO) extraction.