Thermodynamic calculation of supercritical-fluid equilibria: New mixing rules for equations of state

Simple cubic equations of state with conventional mixing rules have played an important role in the calculation of phase equilibria and other thermodynamic properties of non-polar fluid mixtures. In the application of supercritical fluids to separation processes, volumetric as well as phase equilibrium properties are very important for rational process design.

Heyen (1980) proposed a cubic equation of state which shows better accuracy in the calculation of volumetric properties, compared to the Peng-Robinson equation of state. In order to apply his equation to polar mixtures, Heyen recently proposed a density-independent mixing rule, but this does not obey the universally-observed quadratic mixing rule of the second virial coefficient in the low-density limit.

This paper proposes a new density-dependent mixing rule for the Heyen equation of state. The Heyen equation of state with our new mixing rule appears to calculate the phase equilibria and the volumetric properties of CO₂-containing non-polar as well as polar mixtures with good accuracy.