Thermodynamic aspects of phase equilibrium in binary water–organic solvent mixtures

Abstract

It is shown that the boundary curves of liquid equilibria in binary systems characterize the temperature–concentration boundary of the existence of homogeneous mixtures whose formation is not accompanied by changes in the Gibbs energy of the system and are a combination of two branches that do not convert into each other but intersect at the temperature of homogenization of a mixture of critical composition. The phase diagrams of a number of water–organic solvent systems are analyzed to determine the thermodynamic particularities of the latter.