STUDIES ON FLUIDS AND THEIR MIXTURES USING THE BORN-GREEN-YVON-INTEGRAL-EQUATION TECHNIQUE

We have developed the Born-Green-Yvon (BGY) integral equation theory f or investigating the equilibrium properties of fluids and their mixtur es both on the lattice and in the continuum. Using the continuum theor y we have studied hard sphere fluids over a range in density having ch ain lengths between one and fifty sites. We have also investigated the collapse transition of a square well chain and a square well ring, ea ch having up to four hundred sites, and have predicted the theta tempe rature for these systems. Turning to the case of a dilute (hard-sphere ) solution we have been able to show the effect of solvation on a hard sphere chain, and captured the dependence of this effect on the ratio of hard sphere diameters of the solvent and chain segments. In all th e continuum studies we have found good to excellent agreement with sim ulation results. We have also derived a lattice BGY theory which, whil e less sophisticated than the continuum version, has the advantage of producing simple closed-form expressions for thermodynamic properties of interest. This theory is capable of exhibiting the full range of mi scibility behaviour observed experimentally, including upper and lower critical solution temperatures and closed-loop phase diagrams. We fin d that the theory does an excellent job of fitting to different kinds of experimental data and, making use of the parameters derived from fi ts to pure component data alone, we have been able to predict properti es ranging from pure fluid vapour pressures and critical temperatures to changes in the volume and enthalpy on mixing as well as coexistence curves for solutions.