A simplified approach to vapor-liquid equilibria calculations with the group-contribution lattice-fluid equation of state

Equations of state that are based on the lattice-statistics approach use Guggenheim's quasi-chemical approximation to describe the non-randomness in the mixture due to the energetic interactions between the molecules. For ternary and higher-component systems the non-randomness expression is complex and requires an iterative calculation procedure. We have shown that the non-randomness parameters play a negligible role in the application of the GCLF-EoS model (based on the Panayiotou-Vera EoS) for predicting vapor-liquid equilibria. Omission of the non-randomness parameters from such calculations can significantly improve the computation efficiency. Binary, ternary, and quaternary vapor-liquid equilibria predictions were made including polystyrene, polyvinyl acetate, polyethylene, and polypropylene in polar and non-polar solvents to test the theory. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.