Extending the Gibbs tangent plane semicontinuous mixtures

The computation of phase equilibrium for semicontinuous mixtures results in a set of algebraic-functional equations which are commonly solved using the pseudocomponent approach or reducing the order of the functional equations to a set of algebraic equations by means of a Petrov–Galerkin approach. Both approaches can be taken as particular cases of the method of weighed residuals. In order to perform stability analysis of phase equilibrium, the classical tangent plane criterion algorithms can be used as the first approach. There is a lack of functional formulation for the stability criterion in the literature. In some special cases, such as mixtures containing continuous families of heavy-components, a new formulation of the tangent plane criterion is required. In the present work, functional extensions of the Gibbs tangent plane criterion are described. The use of the proposed criteria was exemplified by calculating solid–liquid phase equilibrium of a crude oil containing asphaltenes on titration with a precipitating agent, n-pentane.