Molecular Simulation Of Vapour-Liquid-Liquid-Equilibrium.
Phase equilibrium data is vital for designing chemical separation equipment. Traditionally, such data is obtained through laboratory experiments by sampling and analysing each phase of an equilibrated chemical mixture. An alternative means of generating such data is via molecular simulations, which also gives insight into the microscopic structure of the phases. This project was undertaken due to the lack of work on molecular simulations in predicting vapour-liquid-liquid equilibrium (VLLE). Gibbs Ensemble Monte Carlo molecular simulations were performed in the isochoricisothermal (NVT) and isobaric-isothermal (NVT) ensembles to determine the ability and limitations of the Transferable Potentials for Phase Equilibria (United-Atom) and Extended Simple Point Charge (SPC-E) force fields in predicting three-phase fluid equilibrium for two binary and three ternary industrially relevant mixtures: n-hexane/water (1), ethane/ethanol (2), methane/n-heptane/water (3), n-butane/1-butene/water (4) and nhexane/ ethanol/water (5). The NPT ensemble proved inadequate for predicting VLLE for binary mixtures, as for both binary mixtures (1 and 2), the simulations reverted to two phases. This was due in part to the unlike-pair interactions between pseudoatoms in different molecules not being accurately predicted at the specified simulation conditions to reproduce experimental mixture densities and vapour pressures. It was also due to the sensitivity of the NPT ensemble to perturbations which probably removed the system from its three-phase trajectory in Gibbs phase space, since specifying even the correct pressure corresponding to the potential models was unsuccessful in obtaining stable VLLE. Furthermore, ternary VLLE could not be obtained for a mixture exhibiting an extremely narrow three-phase region (4) and simulations for a miscible, non-ideal mixture (5) gave mole fractions that were in poor agreement with experiment. Good results were obtained for mixture 3 which exhibits limited mutual solubilities and a large three phase region. The NVT ensemble overcame the shortcomings of the NPT ensemble by producing three stable phases for the binary mixtures, revealing that the three-phase pressures were shifted by as much as 12%. Also, the narrow three-phase region of mixture 4 was overcome by adjusting the total system volume, producing three stable phases. These were also the first successful binary VLLE simulations involving complex polyatomic molecules.