Linking excess entropy and acentric factor in spherical fluids

Introduced by Pitzer in 1955, the acentric factor (ω) has been used to evaluate a molecule's deviation from the corresponding state principle. Pitzer devised ω based on a concept called perfect liquid (or centric fluid), a hypothetical species perfectly adhering to this principle. However, its physical significance remains unclear. This work attempts to clarify the centric fluid from an excess entropy perspective. We observe that the excess entropy per particle of centric fluids approximates -kB at their critical points, akin to the communal entropy of an ideal gas in classical cell theory. We devise an excess entropy dissection and apply it to model fluids (square-well, Lennard-Jones, Mie n-6, and the two-body ab initio models) to interpret this similarity. The dissection method identifies both centricity-independent and centricity-dependent entropic features. Regardless of the acentric factor, the attractive interaction contribution to the excess entropy peaks at the density where local density is most enhanced due to the competition between the local attraction and critical fluctuations. However, only in centric fluids does the entropic contribution from the local attractive potential become comparable to that of the hard sphere exclusion, making the centric fluid more structured than acentric ones. These findings elucidate the physical significance of the centric fluid as a system of particles where the repulsive and attractive contributions to the excess entropy become equal at its gas-liquid criticality. We expect these findings to offer a way to find suitable intermolecular potentials and assess the physical adequacy of equations of state.