Morse fluids in the immediate vicinity of the critical point: Calculation of thermodynamic coefficients

TL;DR

This paper applies a microscopic cell fluid model to Morse liquids near the critical point, accurately calculating thermodynamic coefficients for alkali metals sodium and potassium, and analyzing their behavior close to critical conditions.

Contribution

It extends the cell fluid model to Morse liquids with parameters for alkali metals, providing accurate predictions of critical properties and thermodynamic coefficients near the critical point.

Findings

Critical temperatures, densities, and pressures match experimental data.

Thermodynamic coefficients near the critical point are numerically calculated.

Behavior of compressibility, density fluctuations, and thermal expansion near the critical point is characterized.

Abstract

The previously proposed approach for the microscopic description of the critical behavior of Morse liquids based on the cell fluid model is applied to the case where the parameters of the Morse interaction potential correspond to alkali metals (sodium and potassium). The critical temperatures, densities, and pressures obtained for sodium and potassium agree with the experimental results. The thermodynamic coefficients (isothermal compressibility, density fluctuations, and thermal expansion) of sodium are investigated in the supercritical temperature region. Numerical calculations of thermodynamic coefficients are performed close to the critical point, where carrying out theoretical and experimental research is challenging. The change in compressibility with increasing density at various temperature values is traced. The behavior of density fluctuations approaching the critical point is shown for different temperatures. The variation in the magnitude of the thermal expansion with increasing temperature for different pressure values is illustrated.