On the role of the definition of potential models in Gibbs ensemble phase equilibria simulations of the H₂S-pentane mixture

Abstract

The effect of treating explicitly the coulombic and polarization interactions is investigated through the calculation of the coexistence curve of the pentane-H₂S binary mixture. In this work, potential models have been developed for hydrogen sulphide and pentane, which include electrostatic sites—estimated from ab initio calculations—and polarizable sites—estimated from experimental data—in addition to Lennard-Jones sites. Compared to existing models, these new models have the same number of fitting parameters to experimental thermodynamic data. They are shown to correctly describe the coexistence curve of the pure compounds. When applied to the case of mixtures, together with Lorentz-Berthelot combining rules, they allow one to obtain a more accurate prediction of the coexisting compositions of the mixture. Furthermore, it is shown that the interaction energy in this kind of mixture cannot be properly described by using effective potential models usually considered for pure compounds.