PART I: This work is part of an investigation to determine activity coefficients at infinite dilution (1'73) of hydrocarbons dissolved in the industrially important polar solvent tetrahydrothiophene-l, l-dioxide (sulfolane), by medium pressure gas liquid chromatography (g.l.c.). In this work the activity coefficients at infinite dilution for a series of l-alkenes (C6-CS) , l-alkynes (C6-CS) , and cycloalkanes (C7 and Cs) have been measured in the polar solvent, sulfolane, at 303.15 K and 313.15 K. The activity coefficients of some of the solutes discussed in this work would be difficult to determine by any other method because of their low solubility in sulfolane. The mixed second virial coefficients used in this work were determined assuming the principle of corresponding states, the Hudson and McCoubrey combining rules for T~2' the Lorentz rule for V~2' and the McGlashan-Potter equation. PART II: Unrefined sugar contains organic colour material originating In the sugarcane or formed during the extraction and purification processes. Sugar colour must be within the limits of acceptability for direct or indirect consumption. In this work, a cost effective technique to separate colourants from sugar through a sucrose packed medium pressure chromatographic column was investigated. Three dimensional perspective plots of wavelength/absorbance/time were developed to provide insight into the nature of the sugar colourants and to provide a means of investigating various decolourisation systems. In addition to the above experiment a procedure was developed to remove colourant species from unrefined sugar samples and from samples taken during the refining process for chemical analysis. In this work only one technique - gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy was used to identify the species.

Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1996.