Locus of Binary and Ternary Azeotropes in Chloroform-Methanol-Acetone Mixture

​
Consider a ternary mixture of chloroform, acetone, and methanol at
101.325kPa
. The vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE) behavior is described by a modified form of Raoult's law with activity coefficients predicted by the Wilson model[1].
This mixture presents four azeotropes, whose compositions and boiling points are:
​
mole%
BP°C
chloroform
methanol
acetone
A
1
65.52
34.48
-
53.82
A
2
-
20.93
79.07
55.35
A
3
66.13
-
33.21
64.45
A
4
22.90
43.89
33.21
57.32
This Demonstration shows the density plot of the function
f=
3
∑
i=1
2
(
x
i
-
y
i
)
. At azeotropes,
x
i
=
y
i
and thus
f=0
; also
f=0
for pure components (i.e., at the vertices of the triangle).
This mixture presents three binary azeotropes and a ternary azeotrope. Azeotropes and pure components can be readily identified by the orange-colored regions. You can drag the locator to display the corresponding value of the function
f
. Locator coordinates (i.e., the mole fractions of chloroform and acetone in the liquid phase) are displayed in the upper-right corner. The last snapshot shows a situation where the value of
f
is very small near the ternary azeotrope,
A
4
.

References

[1] G. M. Wilson, "Vapor-Liquid Equilibrium XI: A New Expression for the Excess Free Energy of Mixing," Journal of the American Chemical Society, 86(2), 1964 pp. 127–130.

Permanent Citation

Housam Binous, Brian G. Higgins
​
​"Locus of Binary and Ternary Azeotropes in Chloroform-Methanol-Acetone Mixture"​
​http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/LocusOfBinaryAndTernaryAzeotropesInChloroformMethanolAcetone/​
​Wolfram Demonstrations Project​
​Published: September 6, 2011