Azeotrope - Deviation From Raoult's Law

Deviation From Raoult's Law

Raoult's law predicts the vapor pressures of ideal mixtures as a function of composition ratio. In general only mixtures of chemically similar solvents, such as n-hexane with n-heptane, form nearly ideal mixtures that come close to obeying Raoult's law. Solvent combinations that can form azeotropes are always nonideal, and as such they deviate from Raoult's law.

The diagram on the right illustrates total vapor pressure of three hypothetical mixtures of constituents, X, and Y. The temperature throughout the plot is assumed to be constant.

The center trace is a straight line, which is what Raoult's law predicts for an ideal mixture. The top trace illustrates a nonideal mixture that has a positive deviation from Raoult's law, where the total combined vapor pressure of constituents, X and Y, is greater than what is predicted by Raoult's law. The top trace deviates sufficiently that there is a point on the curve where its tangent is horizontal. Whenever a mixture has a positive deviation and has a point at which the tangent is horizontal, the composition at that point is a positive azeotrope. At that point the total vapor pressure is at a maximum. Likewise the bottom trace illustrates a nonideal mixture that has a negative deviation from Raoult's law, and at the composition where tangent to the trace is horizontal there is a negative azeotrope. This is also the point where total vapor pressure is minimum.