A Model for Predicting the Density of Glycerol Water Mixture, and Its Applicability to Other Alcohol Water Mixture

A mixture of alcohol and water is commonly used as antifreeze, liquor, and the fundamental solvents for the manufacture of cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and inks in our daily life. Since various properties of alcohol water mixtures such as density, boiling or melting point, viscosity, and dielectric constant are determined by their mixing ratio, it is very important to know the mixing ratio to predict their properties. One of simple method to find the mixing ratio is measuring the density of the mixtures. However, it is not easy to predict the mixing ratio from the density of the mixtures because the relationship between mixing ratio and density has not been established well. The relationship is dependent on the relative sizes of solute and solvent molecules, and their interactions. Recently, an empirical model to predict the density of glycerol water mixture from their mixing ratio has been introduced. The suggested model is simple but quite accurate for glycerol water mixture. In this article, we investigated the applicability of this model to different alcohol water mixtures. Densities for six different alcohol water mixtures containing various alcohols (e.g., ethylene glycol, 1,3-propane diol, propylene glycol, methanol, ethanol, and 1-propanol) were simulated and compared to experimentally measured ones to investigate the applicability of the model proposed for glycerol water mixtures to other alcohol water mixtures. The model predicted the actual density of all alcohol water mixtures tested in this article with high accuracy at various ratios. This model can probably be used to predict the mixing ratio of other alcohol water mixtures from their densities beyond 6 alcohols tested in this article from their densities.