There are numerous examples of the importance of small molecule migration in polymeric materials, such as in drying polymeric packing, controlled drug delivery, formation of films, and membrane separation, etc. The Chapman-Enskog kinetic theory of hard-sphere fluids with the Weeks-Chandler-Andersen effective hard-sphere diameter (Enskog-WCA) has been the most fruitful in diffusion studies of simple fluids and mixtures. In this work, the ability of the Enskog-WCA model to describe the temperature and concentration dependence of the mutual diffusion coefficient, D, for a polystyrene-toluene system was evaluated. Using experimental diffusion data, two polymer model approaches and three mixing rules for the effective hard-sphere diameter were tested. Some procedures tested resulted in models that are capable of correlating the experimental data with the refereed system well for a solvent mass fraction greater than 0.3.
Polymer-solvent systems; mutual diffusion coefficients; Chapman-Enskog kinetic theory
