Liquid-liquid equilibria for polymer solutions and blends, including copolymers

A simplified perturbed hard-sphere-chain (PHSC) theory is applied to interpret, correlate, and (in part) predict liquid-liquid equilibria (LLE) for polymer solutions and blends, including copolymers. The PHSC equation of state uses a hard-sphere-chain reference system plus a van der Waals attractive perturbation. Three pure-component parameters are obtained from readily available thermodynamic properties. Mixture parameters are obtained using pure-component parameters, conventional combining rules, and one or two binary constants. Theoretical and experimental coexistence curves and miscibility maps show good agreement for selected blends containing polymers and copolymers. For LLE of dilute or semi-dilute solvent/polymer solutions, it is necessary to decrease the pure-component polymer chain length in the perturbation term, probably because the mean-field approximation is not suitable for such solutions.