Analytical Approach to Clusters in near Critical CO₂

Clusters greatly influence thermophysical properties of near critical gases. The cluster structures of supercritical fluids in general and Carbon Dioxide especially are important for the advanced supercritical fluid technologies and analytics development. The paper extends to near critical densities the developed earlier methods to extract the clusters’ properties from Online Electronic Database of NIST on thermophysical properties of fluids. This Database contains a hidden knowledge of cluster fractions’ properties in real gases. The discovered earlier linear chain clusters dominate at intermediate densities. Their properties can be extrapolated to high density gases, thus opening the way to study large 3D clusters in near critical zone. The potential energy density of a gas, cleared from the chain clusters’ contribution, reflects only the 3D clusters’ characteristics. A series expansion of this value by the Monomer Fraction density discovers properties of n-particle 3D clusters. The paper demonstrates a discrete row of 3D clusters’ particle numbers and gives estimations for bond energies of these clusters.