Determination, correlation and prediction of solubilities of desmosterol in five organic solvents

The solubilities of desmosterol in n-hexane, 2-butanone, 1-butanol, DMSO, acetic acid were determined. The results were correlated and predicted with ideal solution, Apelblat equation and COSMO-RS models, respectively, and average relative deviations (ARD) were used to evaluate these models. The ARDs of experimental data correlated by ideal solution and Apelblat equation are less than 11.0%, however which have no prediction capability for determining the solubility of desmosterol in these systems. COSMO-RS prediction results were extremely dissatisfying, but the predicted values can be in agreement with the experimental values by using one experimental value. The total ARD for desmosterol in above five pure solvents can be reduced to 26.98% for COSMO-RS (ref) from 304.30%. The results show that COSMO-RS (ref) with only one experimental data can be used for the prediction of desmosterol solubility in organic solvents, which is useful in rapid selecting suitable solvents for industrial separation and purification.