BINODAL AND SPINODAL CURVES - A SIMULATION FOR VARIOUS HIGH POLYMER MIXTURES

Flory's equation-of-state theory has been used to predict the lower critical solution temperature behavior of polymer-polymer mixtures. The spinodal phase boundary of numbers of high molecular weight polymer mixtures have been previously simulated using this theory. In this paper a procedure for simultaneous predictions of the binodal and the spinodal curves by equating the chemical potential of each component in the mixture is presented. The method is tested for five different mixtures. The effects of the binary and pure component state parameters on the simulated curves are discussed and the simulated phase diagrams are compared with the experimental cloud point curves. It is found that in most cases the results are more consistent with the cloud point curve being closer to the spinodal curve than the binodal.