Modeling of Phase Equilibria

(Aqueous-Carbonic fluid example)

It is well known that there is considerable immiscibility amongst H
2
O and CO
2
. The
mutual solubility of the two species is enhanced at high temperatures and pressures that
can be represented as a series of solvi in T-X diagrams constructed at different pressures
such as the sketch below.




















One can use the same principle of lever rule to calculate the composition of the two
phases to which an original homogeneous aqueous-carbonic fluid at high temperature
will split. Addition of NaCl to the system enhances the immiscibility and the fluid splits
at lower temperature and pressures compared to fluids free of NaCl. (refer to Boweers
and Helgeson, 1983 to see the series of binary T-X diagrams at fixed wt% of NaCl
relative to water. Although this is strictly a ternary system, phase equilibrium modeling
can be attempted on pseudobinaries with fixed NaCl contents.


The mathematical formalism of modeling phase equilibrist is as follows:

If the original homogeneous fluid splits into two phases that are in equilibrium, then the
chemical potential (molar Gibbs free energy), in turn the activities of the components are
identical in both the splitted phases. For liquid species, we can follow the same formalism
as gaseous species and can write in the form of mole fraction and activity coefficient ().
For any gas, if we chose the standard state as the pure gas at temperature and pressure of
interest, then we can write the activity coefficient for the gas as the ratio of the fugacity
coefficient in the mixture (
i
) .
Let us consider an aqueous carbonic fluid with NaCl (three components) that was
homogeneous and splits to two phases an aqueous-rich and a carbonic-rich and let the
fraction of the first be represented as and the other fraction is (1-). For the equilibrium
condition, we can write



Where alpha and beta are the two phases (say the aqueous and the carbonic). The
following conditions must satisfy





Representing bulk as (B), the following mass balance equation can be written:


























Equations 1-6 suggest that in order to compute phase equilibria in the system, we know
the bulk composition (mole fraction each component) and have computed the fugacity
coefficients (
i
) (discussed later). We have to make an initial guess of (or X

B
). We can
have estimates of mole fractions of components in phase beta (X
i

) using equation 6.
This will permit us to calculate X
i

. We can check for the condition as stated in eq-2. If

the condition is not satisfied we can take another value of . However, to make the
calculation procedure more logical (for the next choice of ), we shall take a more
rational approach.

























This algorithm will result in calculation of composition of the coexisting phases. The pre-
requisite to this calculation is the computation of fugacity coefficients of species and that
can reasonably done from PVTX relationship as detailed below.

Whenever we want to compute the excess free energy of mixing in a system (binary or
ternary) we have to take into account the activity coefficient term:












Therefore, for computation of phase equilibria, one has to compute the fugacity
coefficients of the component fluid species and have to explore how fugacity or fugacity
coefficients could be computed from PVTX relationships.








































If P
0
is sufficiently low, P=f is a good approximation. Thus













































Thus given a bulk composition of a ternary fluid (say H
2
O-CO
2
-NaCl), on calculation of
the molar volume (using procedure outlined before to calculate the a and b terms for the
mixture), the fugacity coefficient of each component i can be computed if the partial
derivative terms can be evaluated for each species.

They can be approximated as follows:



































































In order to compute the fugacity coefficient for species in the mixed aqueous-carbonic
fluid, one has to compute the individual partial derivative terms for each species and in
order to do that, the a and b terms has to be evaluated.

The same can be achieved from the following empirical equations:







The above set of parameters will enable you to calculate the fugacity coefficients for each
species in the mixture at specified P, T and chosen value of WNaCl and XCO
2
.

Taking WNaCl to be zero would imply working out the H
2
O-CO
2
binary. Try reproducing
the solvus in the system at different temperatures (at fixed pressure) using the G
Ex

expression. You will have to compute fugacity coefficient for the pure species (
i
0
) in
order to compute the activity coefficient. Reproduce the solvus at 1 kilo bar pressure.