Phase equilibria for mixtures containing nonionic surfactant systems: Modeling and experiments

Surfactants are important materials with numerous applications in the cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and food industries due to inter-associating and intra-associating bond. We present a lattice fluid equation-of-state that combines the quasi-chemical nonrandom lattice fluid model with Veytsman statistics for (intra + inter) molecular association to calculate phase behavior for mixtures containing nonionic surfactants. We also measured binary (vapor + liquid) equilibrium data for {2-butoxyethanol (C4E1) + n-hexane} and {2:-butoxyethanol (C4E1) + n-heptane) systems at temperatures ranging from (303.15 to 323.15) K. A static apparatus was used in this study. The presented equation-of-state correlated well with the measured and published data for mixtures containing nonionic surfactant systems. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.