Shear viscosity of polar liquid mixtures via non-equilibrium molecular dynamics: water, methanol, and acetone

Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) with isobaric and isokinetic controls were used to simulate the shear viscosity for binary mixtures of water, methanol and acetone, and for ternary mixtures. In all, 22 different liquid composition points were simulated at 298.15 K and 0.1 MPa. A new set of acetone potential parameters was developed, while slight variants to existing water and methanol models were used. Long range Coulombic interactions were computed with the Ewald sum adapted to Lees-Edwards boundary conditions as formulated in Wheeler, D. R., Fuller, N. G., and Rowley, R. L., 1997, Molec. Phys., 92, 55. The attractive (dispersive) part of the Lennard-Jones (LJ) interactions also was handled by a lattice sum. A hybrid mixing rule was used for the LJ cross interactions. Viscosities extrapolated to zero shear compared well with experimental results, having a mean absolute error of 14% and no errors greater than 30%. Although the simulations successfully predicted viscosity maxima for mixtures high in water content, the peak heights tended ro be too low, probably due to the limitations of the water model. The results suggest that NEMD may be a viable means of estimating viscosities for polar liquid mixtures with an unrestricted number of components.