Two substantial differences exist between the condensation of flowing
vapour mixtures and pure vapours. Firstly, in the case of a mixture, t
he compositions and thus the physical properties of both vapour and li
quid phase change along the condensation path. Secondly, the mass tran
sfer in the vapour between phase determines in the most cases the whol
e condensation kinetic. On the contrary, the condensation of pure vapo
urs is controled only by heal transfer in the liquid phase. The presen
t paper deals with the simultaneous heat and mass transfer processes d
uring multicomponent condensation using the film model. The interactio
n between the components and the mass transfer in the vapour phase are
analysed on the basis of the Maxwell-Stefan-equations. In addition to
the exact matrix solution of these equations, some of their approxima
te solutions are also included into the considerations and compared wi
th experiments. The results obtained with the film model are mostly in
good agreement with experimental data, especially for simple flow geo
metry, e.g. condensation in a vertical tube. The exact solution of the
Maxwell-Stefan-equations leads to a better agreement between the calc
ulations and the experiments than the simple approximate methods. The
agreement is generally less satisfactory for complex flow configuratio
ns as for example of a condensation in a horizontal shell and-tube con
denser with baffels. Here improvements seem to be necessary not only w
ith regard to the interactions between the mixture components, but als
o with regard to the calculations of binary mass transfer coefficients
which are necessary for the use of the film model.