General Form of the Cross-Energy Parameter of Equations of State

Abstract

Phase equilibrium calculations with cubic equations of state are sensitive to mixing and combining rules employed. In this work, we present a suitable general form of the combining rule for the cross-energy parameter, often considered to be the key property in phase equilibrium calculations. The proposed rule is derived from molecular considerations, namely, the London−Mie theory. The typically used geometric mean (GM) and other combining rules can be deducted from this expression from different values of the parameter n, which is the attractive tail of the Mie potential. We show that using this n parameter as the variable instead of the commonly employed kij offers useful insight into the behavior of cubic equations of state for a large number of asymmetric systems including gas/alkanes, polymer solutions and blends, and alcohol/alkane and gas/solid systems.