Universal Crossover Approach to Equation of State for Fluids

It is well known that any classical equation of state fails to describe the properties of fluids in the critical region, where the behavior of fluids is strongly affected by density fluctuations. In the present work, a universal approach to incorporate the effects of density fluctuations in the global behavior of one-component fluids is proposed. As an illustration of our general approach, a crossover generalization of a four-parametric cubic equation of state, which can be useful for engineering applications, is demonstrated. The obtained crossover equation reproduces Ising-like singular scaling behavior in the critical region and reduces to the original cubic equation of state far away from the critical point. In addition, the crossover equation of state is applied to describe thermodynamic properties of methane, ethane, carbon dioxide, and water. It is shown that incorporation of critical fluctuations leads to a significant improvement in the ability of the cubic equation to represent thermodynamic properties and liquid-vapor equilibrium of one-component fluids.