Thermokinetics of reactions with liquid-liquid phase separation

Article abstract of DOI:10.1002/bbpc.19961000811

Isothermal heat flow calorimetry with controlled thermoelectric cooling resp. heating is applied to study the critical slowing down of the kinetics of reactions with liquid-liquid phase separation. Results (i) on the acid-catalysed hydrolysis of chloromethyloxirane by water, and (ii) on the ring-opening and esterification of bromomethyloxirane by dichloroacetic acid in the presence of cyclohexane as an inert solvent, both at 298.15 K, are presented. The heat production w(t) which is proportional to the reaction rate ?ζ/?t (where ζ, is the reaction coordinate) exhibits a funnel-like fall-off when the reaction path intersects the binodal curve at the critical solution point CP. From the shape of this part of the w(t) curves an average value of the critical exponent Φ = 0.72±0,003, which refers to the change of ζ with t at constant T and p, is calculated. This result is to be compared with the theoretical value of Φ = 0.708 obtained from a modification of the Griffiths and Wheeler theory of critical points in multicomponent systems to chemically reacting systems far from equilibrium by introducing f as an additional extensive variable. This allows the critical slowing down of the reaction rates to be interpreted as resulting from the divergence of the correlation length ζ, resp. from the convergence of the transport phenomena to zero at the CP. ? VCH Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, 1996.