Statistical Mechanical Theory of the Thermal Conductivity of Binary Liquid Solutions

Abstract

A statistical mechanical theory of the thermal conductivity of solutions results from a generalization to the space of molecular pairs of the linear expressions appropriate to the thermodynamics of irreversible processes for the mean forces in singlet configuration space. When simplifying assumptions of the equilibrium regular solution theory are introduced into the general expression, the thermal conductivity of the mixture is obtained in terms of the thermal conductivities of the pure components, the self‐diffusion coefficients, mole fractions, and molar volumes. Numerical calculations are in semiquantitative agreement with experiment.