Phase diagrams

Abstract

Since ancient times smelting of ore has been a primary task of the foundrymen, and the modern chemical engineer faces a thermodynamically similar task when he refines oil and natural gas. Nature offers her resources mostly as mixtures and man mostly wants them in the pure form, or at least in enriched form. It has long since been learned that the recipe for enrichment is smelting or destillation, but the thermodynamic knowledge behind the tricks governing these processes are more recent. They consist of outwitting the entropy of mixing, and sometimes the heat of mixing can promote that purpose.