Prediction of the viscosity of multi-component liquid mixtures: a generalized McAllister three-body interaction model

The work of Heric and Brewer (1969 Journal of Chemical Engineering Data, 14 , 55-63) which involved testing a number of liquid viscosity correlations r esulted in concluding that the McAllister (1960 A.I. Ch.E. Journal, 6, 427- 431) model was the most accurate. However, the fact that the McAllister mod el is correlative in nature severely limits its practicality and usefulness . This is because costly and time-consuming data are required for the deter mination of the adjustable (or interaction) parameters contained in that mo del (Asfour, Cooper, Wu & Zahran, 1991, Industrial and Engineering Chemistr y Research, 13, 1666-1669). This study reports the development of a general ized expression of the McAllister model for multi-component liquid mixtures , evaluation of the generalized McAllister model parameters, converting the McAllister model into a predictive model, and comparison of the predictive capability of generalized McAllister model with those of the GC-UNIMOD rep orted by Cao, Knudsen, Fredenslund and Rasmussen (1993a,b Industrial and En gineering Chemistry Research, 32, 2077-2087, 2088-2092) and with the genera lized corresponding slates principle (GCSP) which was reported by Teja and Rice (1981 Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, Fundamentals, 20, 77-81). The comparison clearly indicated that the generalized McAllister model is c onsistently far superior to the GC-UNIMOD and the GCSP in predicting the vi scosities of ternary, quaternary, and quinary liquid mixtures. This, no dou bt, represents a significant accomplishment in the area of predicting the v iscometric behaviour of multi-component liquid mixtures. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.