Vapor-liquid (VLE) and liquid-liquid (LLE) phase equilibria calculations for polystyrene plus methyleyclohexane and polystyrene plus cyclohexane solutions

This paper presents the vapor-liquid (VLE) and liquid-liquid (LLE) phase equilibria predictions for polystyrene in two theta solvents: cyclohexane and methylcyclohexane. VLE calculations were performed with the Elbro free volume method and a modified version of the PC-SAFT method, as well as with three UNIFAC type group contribution models: Entropic Free Volume + UNIFAC VLE 1 coeff., Entropic Free Volume + UNIFAC VLE 2coeff., and Oishi-Prausnitz + UNIFAC VLE 2coeff.

Solvent activities were calculated for the polystyrene + cyclohexane and polystyrene + methylcyclohcxane solutions, and compared with experimental data. LLE predictions were performed with PC-SAFT method and compared with experimental data. The obtained results show that the PC-SAFT method gave the most accurate predictions for both VLE as well as LLE for the systems studied.