Thermodiffusion coefficients of binary and ternary hydrocarbon mixtures.

In this study, we have measured the thermodiffusion coefficients of six hydrocarbon liquid ternary mixtures at 25 degrees C using the thermogravitational technique. Mixtures of 1,2,3,4-tetrahydronaphthalene-isobutylbenzene-n-dodecane at four different concentrations and 1,2,3,4-tetrahydronaphthalene-isobutylbenzene-n-decane at two concentrations have been considered. We have used a plane-thermogravitational column with a small gap dimension to improve the accuracy of the recently reported data. The obtained results have been confirmed by measurements in a cylindrical column. We have also measured the thermodiffusion coefficients of 13 binary mixtures between the different components of ternaries in order to analyze the validity of the additive rule proposed in the literature to determine thermodiffusion coefficients of ternary mixtures from binary thermodiffusion data. A new correlation based on column separation, which reproduces the data within the experimental error, is proposed.