Classical density functional theory for interfacial properties of hydrogen, helium, deuterium, neon and their mixtures

Abstract

The DFT is developed to study the interfacial properties of hydrogen, helium, neon, deuterium and their mixtures, i.e. fluids that are strongly influenced by quantum effects at low temperatures. White Bear fundamental measure theory is used for the hard-sphere contribution of the Helmholtz energy functional, and a weighted density approximation is used for the dispersion terms. For mixtures, a contribution is included to account for non-additivity in the Lorentz-Berthelot combination rule. Predictions of the radial distribution function from DFT are in excellent agreement with results from molecular simulations, both for pure components and mixtures.Above the normal boiling point and 5 % below the critical temperature, the DFT yields surface tensions of neon, hydrogen, and deuterium with average deviations from experiments of 7.5 %, 4.4 %, and 1.8 % respectively. <p>The surface tensions of hydrogen/deuterium, para-hydrogen/helium, deuterium/helium, and hydrogen/neon mixtures are reproduced with a mean absolute error of 5.4 %, 8.1 %, 1.3 %, and 7.5 %, respectively.</p> <p>The surface tensions are predicted with excellent accuracy at temperatures above 20 K. The poor accuracy below 20 K is due to the inability of Feynman-Hibbs corrected Mie potentials to represent the real fluid behavior at these conditions, motivating the development of new intermolecular potentials. This DFT can be leveraged in the future to study confined fluids and assess the performance of porous materials for hydrogen storage and transport.