Equilibrium activity coefficients

LIQUID-LIQUID EQUILIBRIUM ACTIVITY COEFFICIENT MODELS... 

C vapor-liquid equilibrium-activity coefficient, measured range 20-50°C, Cooling et al. 1992)... 

FIGURE 8.10 Activity coefficients for water-sulfuric acid at 200°C [8, p. 2-83]. Observe that the least volatile species, sulfuric acid, is chosen as species a. This is contrary to the standard convention, but the normal way of showing water-sulfuric acid diagrams. This equilibrium is complicated by the formation of several weak intermolecular compounds and by the presence of free SO3 in the equilibrium vapor. Nonetheless, it shows that for species that form such weakly-bonded quasi-compounds, the equilibrium activity coefficients can be quite small. 

In vapor-liquid equilibria, it is relatively easy to start the iteration because assumption of ideal behavior (Raoult s law) provides a reasonable zeroth approximation. By contrast, there is no obvious corresponding method to start the iteration calculation for liquid-liquid equilibria. Further, when two liquid phases are present, we must calculate for each component activity coefficients in two phases since these are often strongly nonlinear functions of compositions, liquid-liquid equilibrium calculations are highly sensitive to small changes in composition. In vapor-liquid equilibria at modest pressures, this sensitivity is lower because vapor-phase fugacity coefficients are usually close to unity and only weak functions of composition. For liquid-liquid equilibria, it is therefore more difficult to construct a numerical iteration procedure that converges both rapidly and consistently. 

If we vary the composition of a liquid mixture over all possible composition values at constant temperature, the equilibrium pressure does not remain constant. Therefore, if integrated forms of the Gibbs-Duhem equation [Equation (16)] are used to correlate isothermal activity coefficient data, it is necessary that all activity coefficients be evaluated at the same pressure. Unfortunately, however, experimentally obtained isothermal activity coefficients are not all at the same pressure and therefore they must be corrected from the experimental total pressure P to the same (arbitrary) reference pressure designated P. This may be done by the rigorous thermodynamic relation at constant temperature and composition ... 

Application of the algorithm for analysis of vapor-liquid equilibrium data can be illustrated with the isobaric data of 0th-mer (1928) for the system acetone(1)-methanol(2). For simplicity, the van Laar equations are used here to express the activity coefficients. 

The computer subroutines for calculation of vapor-phase and liquid-phase fugacity (activity) coefficients, reference fugac-ities, and molar enthalpies, as well as vapor-liquid and liquid-liquid equilibrium ratios, are described and listed in this Appendix. These are source routines written in American National Standard FORTRAN (FORTRAN IV), ANSI X3.9-1978, and, as such, should be compatible with most computer systems with FORTRAN IV compilers. Approximate storage requirements and CDC 6400 execution times for these subroutines are given in Appendix J. 

Considering first pure nitric acid as the solvent, if the concentrations of nitronium ion in the absence and presence of a stoichiometric concentration x of dinitrogen tetroxide are yo and y respectively, these will also represent the concentrations of water in the two solutions, and the concentrations of nitrate ion will be y and x- y respectively. The equilibrium law, assuming that the variation of activity coefficients is negligible, then requires that ... 

The true thermodynamic equilibrium constant is a function of activity rather than concentration. The activity of a species, a, is defined as the product of its molar concentration, [A], and a solution-dependent activity coefficient, Ya. 

Several features of equation 6.50 deserve mention. First, as the ionic strength approaches zero, the activity coefficient approaches a value of one. Thus, in a solution where the ionic strength is zero, an ion s activity and concentration are identical. We can take advantage of this fact to determine a reaction s thermodynamic equilibrium constant. The equilibrium constant based on concentrations is measured for several increasingly smaller ionic strengths and the results extrapolated... 

A quantitative solution to an equilibrium problem may give an answer that does not agree with the value measured experimentally. This result occurs when the equilibrium constant based on concentrations is matrix-dependent. The true, thermodynamic equilibrium constant is based on the activities, a, of the reactants and products. A species activity is related to its molar concentration by an activity coefficient, where a = Yi[ ] Activity coefficients often can be calculated, making possible a more rigorous treatment of equilibria. 

The analogy between equations derived from the fundamental residual- and excess-propeily relations is apparent. Whereas the fundamental lesidanl-pL-opeRy relation derives its usefulness from its direct relation to equations of state, the ci cc.s.s-property formulation is useful because V, and y are all experimentally accessible. Activity coefficients are found from vapor/liquid equilibrium data, and and values come from mixing experiments. 

The activity coefficient y can be defined as the escaping tendency of a component relative to Raonlt s law in vapor-liqnid eqnihbrinm (see Sec. 4 in this handbook or Null, Phase Equilibrium in Process Design, Wiley-Interscience, 1970). 

Gmehhng and Onken (Vapor-Liquid Equilibrium Data Collection, DECHEMA, Frankfurt, Germany, 1979) have reported a large collection of vapor-liqnid equilibrium data along with correlations of the resulting activity coefficients. This can be used to predict liqnid-hqnid equilibrium partition ratios as shown in Example 1. 

Gmehhng and Onken (op. cit.) give the activity coefficient of acetone in water at infinite dilution as 6.74 at 25 C, depending on which set of vapor-liquid equilibrium data is correlated. From Eqs. (15-1) and (15-7) the partition ratio at infinite dilution of solute can he calculated as follows ... 

Equilibrium Data Collection, DECHEMA, Frankfurt, Germany, 1979) have reported several volumes of data that have been correlated with activity-coefficient equations. 

The anticipated content of impurities in the refined metal may be calculated a priori by assuming thermodynamic equilibrium at both metal/gas interfaces, and using the relevant stabilities of tire gaseous iodides. Adequate thermodynamic data could provide the activities of the impurities widr that of zirconium close to unity, but tire calculation of tire impurity transport obviously requires a knowledge of activity coefficients in the original impure material, which are not sufficiently well known. 

In an attempt to explain the nature of polar interactions, Martire et al. [15] developed a theory assuming that such interactions could be explained by the formation of a complex between the solute and the stationary phase with its own equilibrium constant. Martire and Riedl adopted a procedure used by Danger et al. [16], and divided the solute activity coefficient into two components. 

The pH will depend upon the ionic strength of the solution (which is, of course, related to the activity coefficient — see Section 2.5). Hence, when making a colour comparison for the determination of the pH of a solution, not only must the indicator concentration be the same in the two solutions but the ionic strength must also be equal or approximately equal. The equation incidentally provides an explanation of the so-called salt and solvent effects which are observed with indicators. The colour-change equilibrium at any particular ionic strength (constant activity-coefficient term) can be expressed by a condensed form of equation (4) ... 

The difficulties encountered in the Chao-Seader correlation can, at least in part, be overcome by the somewhat different formulation recently developed by Chueh (C2, C3). In Chueh s equations, the partial molar volumes in the liquid phase are functions of composition and temperature, as indicated in Section IV further, the unsymmetric convention is used for the normalization of activity coefficients, thereby avoiding all arbitrary extrapolations to find the properties of hypothetical states finally, a flexible two-parameter model is used for describing the effect of composition and temperature on liquid-phase activity coefficients. The flexibility of the model necessarily requires some binary data over a range of composition and temperature to obtain the desired accuracy, especially in the critical region, more binary data are required for Chueh s method than for that of Chao and Seader (Cl). Fortunately, reliable data for high-pressure equilibria are now available for a variety of binary mixtures of nonpolar fluids, mostly hydrocarbons. Chueh s method, therefore, is primarily applicable to equilibrium problems encountered in the petroleum, natural-gas, and related industries. 

E6.12 The HC1 pressure in equilibrium with a 1.20 molal solution is 5.15 x 10 8 MPa and the mean ionic activity coefficient is known from emf measurements to be 0.842 at T = 298.15 K. Calculate the mean ionic activity coefficients of HC1 in the following solutions from the given HC1 pressures... 

---