Solid-fluid equilibrium free-energy calculations

The application of this approach to the hard-sphere system was presented by Ree and Hoover in a footnote to their paper on the hard-sphere phase diagram. They made a calculation where they used Eq. (2.27) for the solid phase and an accurate equation of state for the fluid phase to obtain results that are in very close agreement with their results from MC simulations. The LJD theory in combination with perturbation theory for the liquid state free energy has been applied to the calculation of solid-fluid equilibrium for the Lennard-Jones 12-6 potential by Henderson and Barker [138] and by Mansoori and Canfield [139]. Ross has applied a similar approch to the exp-6 potential. A similar approach was used for square well potentials by Young [140]. More recent applications have been made to nonspherical molecules [100,141] and mixtures [101,108,109,142]. 

The classical models of adsorption processes like Langmuir, BET, DR or Kelvin treatments and their numerous variations and extensions, contain several uncontrolled approximations. However, the classical theories are convenient and their usage is very widespread. On the other hand, the aforementioned classical theories do not start from a well - defined molecular model, and the result is that the link between the molecular behaviour and the macroscopic properties of the systems studied are blurred. The more developed and notable descriptions of the condensed systems include lattice models [408] which are solved by means of the mean - field or other non-classical techniques [409]. The virial formalism of low -pressure adsorption discussed above, integral equation method and perturbation theory are also useful approaches. However, the state of the art technique is the density functional theory (DFT) introduced by Evans [410] and Tarazona [411]. The DFT method enables calculating the equilibrium density profile, p (r), of the fluid which is in contact with the solid phase. The main idea of the DFT approach is that the free energy of inhomogeneous fluid which is a function of p (r), can be... 

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