A method to extract potentials from the temperature dependence of Langmuir constants for clathrate-hydrates

It is shown that the temperature dependence of Langmuir constants contains all the information needed to determine spherically averaged intermolecular potentials. An analytical "inversion" method based on the standard statistical model of van der Waals and Platteeuw is presented which extracts cell potentials directly from experimental data. The method is applied to ethane and cyclopropane clathrate-hydrates, and the resulting potentials are much simpler and more meaningful than those obtained by the usual method of numerical fitting with Kihara potentials. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.