Kinetic Theory of Multicomponent Dense Fluid Mixtures of Rigid Spheres

Abstract

The Enskog theory of dense, rigid‐sphere fluids is extended to the multicomponent case. Equations obtained for the transport coefficients reduce to Thorne's equations in the special case of two components. The theory is used to predict the effect of the various independent variables on the isothermal diffusion coefficients for a ternary rigid‐sphere mixture. It is found that coupling can be important if the constituents have significantly different rigid‐sphere diameters. The special case of a ternary mixture with one component dilute is also considered. Many of the trends observed for rigid‐sphere mixtures are in agreement with experimental observations for mixtures of real fluids.