Comparison of different mixing rules for prediction of density and residual internal energy of binary and ternary Lennard–Jones mixtures

Mixing rules are necessary when equations of state for pure fluids are used to calculate various thermodynamic properties of fluid mixtures. The well-known van der Waals one-fluid (vdW1) mixing rules are proved to be good ones and widely used in different equations of state. But vdW1 mixing rules are valid only when molecular size differences of components in a mixture are not very large. The vdW1 type density-dependent mixing rule proposed by Chen et al. [1] is superior for the prediction of pressure and vapor–liquid equilibria when components in the mixture have very different sizes. The extension of the mixing rule to chain-like molecules and heterosegment molecules was also made with good results. In this paper, the comparison of different mixing rules are carried out further for the prediction of the density and the residual internal energy for binary and ternary Lennard–Jones (LJ) mixtures with different molecular sizes and different molecular interaction energy parameters. The results show that the significant improvement for the prediction of densities is achieved with the new mixing rule [1], and that the modification of the mixing rule for the interaction energy parameter is also necessary for better prediction of the residual internal energy.