Enthalpies, excess volumes, and specific heats of critical and supercritical binary mixtures

Reaction kinetics and critical phenomena: rates of some first order gas evolution reactions in binary solvents with a consolute point

We have measured the rate of carbon dioxide evolution in the aniline catalyzed decomposition of acetone dicarboxylic acid in a mixture of isobutyric acid + water near its consolute point. Within a temperature interval of 1 degrees C, which included the critical solution temperature, the first-order rate constant oscillated in magnitude by about 10% as it passed through three complete cycles of slowing down followed by speeding up. Whereas we can find no ready explanation for the speeding up, we suggest that, because the mixture contained no inert components, the slowing down should belong to the Griffiths-Wheeler class of strong critical effects [Phys. Rev. A 1970, 2, 1047]. As a check on this conclusion, we have measured the rate of the SN1 decomposition of benzene diazonium tetrafluoroborate in 2-butoxyethanol + water near the lower critical solution temperature and also the rate of the acid-catalyzed decomposition of ethyl diazoacetate in isobutyric acid + water near the upper critical solution temperature. Both of these reactions evolve nitrogen. In the first reaction, 2-butoxyethanol is inert, whereas in the second, isobutyric acid is inert. In both cases, because there was one inert component, we regarded the response of the rate constant to temperature in the critical region to be representative of the Griffiths-Wheeler class of weak critical effects. Within our accuracy of measurement of about 2% in the rate constant and about 1 mK in the temperature, we could detect no effect of the critical point on the rates of either of these reactions, suggesting that a weak effect may be too small to be seen with our experimental apparatus. The successful observation of a critical effect in the rate of decomposition of acetone dicarboxylic acid proves, however, that kinetic critical phenomena are observable in heterogeneous reactions.

Predicting Mixture Phase Equilibria and Critical Behavior Using the SAFT-VRX Approach

The SAFT-VRX equation of state combines the SAFT-VR equation with a crossover function that smoothly transforms the classical equation into a nonanalytical form close to the critical point. By a combinination of the accuracy of the SAFT-VR approach away from the critical region with the asymptotic scaling behavior seen at the critical point of real fluids, the SAFT-VRX equation can accurately describe the global fluid phase diagram. In previous work, we demonstrated that the SAFT-VRX equation very accurately describes the pvT and phase behavior of both nonassociating and associating pure fluids, with a minimum of fitting to experimental data. Here, we present a generalized SAFT-VRX equation of state for binary mixtures that is found to accurately predict the vapor-liquid equilibrium and pvT behavior of the systems studied. In particular, we examine binary mixtures of n-alkanes and carbon dioxide + n-alkanes. The SAFT-VRX equation accurately describes not only the gas-liquid critical locus for these systems but also the vapor-liquid equilibrium phase diagrams and thermal properties in single-phase regions.

Crossover parametric equation of state for Ising-like systems

We present a parametric equation for the thermodynamic properties in the critical region of three-dimensional Ising-like systems which include fluids and fluid mixtures. The equation of state incorporates a crossover from singular Ising behavior asymptotically close to the critical point to classical (mean-field) behavior further away from the critical point, characterized by two physical crossover parameters: a coupling constant related to the strength and range of molecular interactions and a "cutoff" wave number for the critical fluctuations. In the asymptotic Ising limit, the crossover equation reproduces the most recent theoretical estimates for the universal ratios of the leading and correction-to-scaling critical amplitudes. The equation has been tested by comparing it with recent experimental thermodynamic-property data for 3He near its vapor-liquid critical point.