Convexity in Phase Behavior

Abstract

The study of laminar flow of multicomponent hydrocarbon mixtures in porous media requires an understanding of the qualitative properties of phase behavior relationships in a mathe- matical sense not required in ordinary chemical calculations. If $K \in E^n $ represents a proposed equilibrium ratio vector for an n-component mixture, let $\Omega ( K ) \subset E^n $ represent the set of possible $Z \in E^n $ such that Z and K describe a mathematically feasible chemical system in the sense that Z may be a mixture mole fraction vector consistent with K. $\Omega ( K )$ is shown to be a convex set in $E^n $ and its extreme points are calculated in terms of all the possible binary systems described by K.