The generic van der Waals equation of state and self-diffusion coefficients of liquids

Abstract

In this paper we use the generic van der Waals equation of state to define the free volume of liquids along the liquid–vapor coexistence line (liquids curve) in the case of liquid argon and along three isotherms in the high-pressure regime in the case of liquid methane. With the free volume computed from the cavity function obtained by means of a Monte Carlo simulation method, we have calculated the self-diffusion coefficients of liquid argon and liquid methane. The Cohen–Turnbull free volume theory is used to calculate them. With the empirical parameter appearing in the Cohen–Turnbull theory suitably adjusted, the theoretical and experimental values of the self-diffusion coefficients agree very well with regard to the density and temperature dependence for the cases of available data compared. A pair of analytic formulas for density dependence of the self-diffusion coefficient is obtained by using the approximate cavity functions for hard spheres and tested against the experimental data on methane. A comparison of the analytic formulas with experiment is also very good.