The prediction of isothermal phase equilibria for non-ideal multicomponent mixtures from heats of mixing

A method is presented for predicting both vapor—liquid and liquid—liquid equilibria for multicomponent mixtures using heat of mixing data for the constituent binary pairs together with pure component vapor pressures. Its application to two highly non-ideal hydrocarbon ternary systems is discussed. The parameters of the hybrid local composition model of Renon and Prausnitz, known as the NRTL equation, were evaluated from heat of mixing data for the three binary pairs in each of the two ternary systems. The parameters thus obtained were used in the multicomponent form of the NRTL equation to predict the ternary vapor—liquid equilibrium data for the completely miscible system cyclohexane(1)—n-heptane(2)—touluene(3) and for the partially miscible system acetonitrile(1)—benzene(2)—n-heptane(3) without the need for any ternary or higher order parameters.This method predicted compositions of the single phase region of the partially miscible ternary system with a standard deviation of 10%. It also predicted compositions for the fully miscible system with a standard deviation of 4.6%. Total pressure curves for the partially miscible and miscible ternaries were predicted with standard deviations of 6.6% and 4.5% respectively. Poor predictions of the binodal curve for the partially miscible region were obtained. The method offers a means of predicting the whole range of ternary phase equilibria for miscible systems.