Zeotrope

A zeotropic mixture, or non-azeotropic mixture, is a mixture with components that have different boiling points. For example, nitrogen, methane, ethane, propane, and isobutane constitute a zeotropic mixture. Individual substances within the mixture do not evaporate or condense at the same temperature as one substance. In other words, the mixture has a temperature glide, as the phase change occurs in a temperature range of about four to seven degrees celsius, rather than at a constant temperature. On temperature-compostion graphs, this temperature glide can be seen as the temperature difference between the bubble point and dew point. For zeotropic mixtures, the temperatures on the bubble (boiling) curve are between the individual component's boiling temperatures. When a zeotropic mixture is boiled or condensed, the composition of the liquid and the vapor changes according to the mixtures's temperature-composition diagram.

Zeotropic mixtures have different characteristics in nucleate and convective boiling, as well as in the organic Rankine cycle. Because zeotropic mixtures have different properties than pure fluids or azeotropic mixtures, zeotropic mixtures have many unique applications in industry, namely in distillation, refrigeration, and cleaning processes.

In mixtures of substances, the bubble point is the saturated liquid temperature, whereas the saturated vapor temperature is called the dew point. Because the bubble and dew lines of a zeotropic mixture's temperature-composition diagram do not intersect, a zeotropic mixture in its liquid phase has a different fraction of a component than the gas phase of the mixture. On a temperature-composition diagram, after a mixture in its liquid phase is heated to the temperature at the bubble (boiling) curve, the fraction of a component in the mixture changes along an isothermal line connecting the dew curve to the boiling curve as the mixture boils. At any given temperature, the composition of the liquid is the composition at the bubble point, whereas the composition of the vapor is the composition at the dew point. Unlike azeotropic mixtures, there is no azeotropic point at any temperature on the diagram where the bubble line and dew lines would intersect. Thus, the composition of the mixture will always change between the bubble and dew point component fractions upon boiling from a liquid to a gas until the mass fraction of a component reaches 1 (i.e. the zeotropic mixture is completely separated into its pure components). As shown in Figure 1, the mole fraction of component 1 decreases from 0.4 to around 0.15 as the liquid mixture boils to the gas phase.

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