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n - PATh :.: Process and Product Applied Thermodynamics research ...

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Modeling<br />

2002). However, isomorphism between a one-component system <strong>and</strong> a mixture requires<br />

choosing chemical potentials as independent variables rather than the much more<br />

convenient mole fractions. For engineering application, this requirement makes<br />

computation difficult because all practical equations of state use mole fractions, not<br />

chemical potentials, as independent variables. Nevertheless, as shown by Kiselev <strong>and</strong><br />

Friend (1999), choosing mole fractions as independent variables provides a good<br />

approximation to the original isomorphism assumption, although some scaling behaviour is<br />

not correctly represented. This formalism has been recently extended to mixtures by Cai<br />

<strong>and</strong> Prausnitz (2004) <strong>and</strong> Sun et al. (2005).<br />

The procedure followed in this work is the one based on Wilson’s RG theory<br />

following the implementation of White’s global RG method as done by Prausnitz <strong>and</strong> coworkers<br />

(Lue <strong>and</strong> Prausnitz, 1998; Jiang <strong>and</strong> Prausnitz, 1999 <strong>and</strong> 2000; Cai <strong>and</strong> Prausnitz,<br />

2000). The interaction potential is divided into a reference contribution, due mainly to the<br />

repulsive interactions, <strong>and</strong> a perturbative contribution, due mainly to the attractive<br />

interactions. The RG theory is only applied to the attractive part, since it is considered that<br />

the other term contributes mainly with density fluctuations of very short wavelengths. The<br />

effect of the density fluctuations due to the attractive part of the potential is then divided<br />

into short-wavelength <strong>and</strong> long-wavelength contributions, with the assumption that<br />

contributions from fluctuations of wavelengths less than a certain cut-off length L can be<br />

accurately evaluated by a mean-field theory. The effect of short-wavelength contributions<br />

can be calculated using the soft-SAFT equation, or any other mean-field theory (Llovell et<br />

al., 2004).<br />

The contribution of the long-wavelength density fluctuations is taken into account<br />

through the phase-space cell approximation (Wilson, 1971; Wilson <strong>and</strong> Fischer, 1972). In<br />

a recursive manner, the Helmholtz free energy per volume of a system at density ρ can be<br />

described as (White, 1999 <strong>and</strong> 2000)<br />

( ) a ( ρ)<br />

da ( ρ)<br />

n ρ n<br />

n<br />

a = −1 +<br />

(III.19)<br />

a<br />

soft− SAFT<br />

( ρ ) = a ( classical)<br />

0 (III.20)<br />

where a is the Helmholtz free energy density <strong>and</strong> dan the term where long-wavelength<br />

fluctuations are accounted for in the following way:<br />

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