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A small piece of rapidly melting solid argon shows two concurrent phase changes. The transition from solid to liquid, and gas to liquid (shown by the white condensed water vapour). Other phase changes include: Transition to a mesophase between solid and liquid, such as one of the "liquid crystal" phases.
The solidus is the locus of temperatures (a curve on a phase diagram) below which a given substance is completely solid (crystallized). The solidus temperature specifies the temperature below which a material is completely solid, [2] and the minimum temperature at which a melt can co-exist with crystals in thermodynamic equilibrium.
The solid–liquid phase boundary can only end in a critical point if the solid and liquid phases have the same symmetry group. [5] For most substances, the solid–liquid phase boundary (or fusion curve) in the phase diagram has a positive slope so that the melting point increases with pressure.
McMillan's model, proposed by William McMillan, [70] is an extension of the Maier–Saupe mean field theory used to describe the phase transition of a liquid crystal from a nematic to a smectic A phase. It predicts that the phase transition can be either continuous or discontinuous depending on the strength of the short-range interaction ...
However, only solid→liquid and liquid→solid phase changes are practical for PCMs. Although liquid–gas transitions have a higher heat of transformation than solid–liquid transitions, liquid→gas phase changes are impractical for thermal storage because large volumes or high pressures are required to store the materials in their gas phase.
A typical phase diagram for a single-component material, exhibiting solid, liquid and gaseous phases. The solid green line shows the usual shape of the liquid–solid phase line. The dotted green line shows the anomalous behavior of water when the pressure increases. The triple point and the critical point are shown as red dots.
Most liquids freeze by crystallization, formation of crystalline solid from the uniform liquid. This is a first-order thermodynamic phase transition, which means that as long as solid and liquid coexist, the temperature of the whole system remains very nearly equal to the melting point due to the slow removal of heat when in contact with air, which is a poor heat conductor.
In chemistry, the lever rule is a formula used to determine the mole fraction (x i) or the mass fraction (w i) of each phase of a binary equilibrium phase diagram.It can be used to determine the fraction of liquid and solid phases for a given binary composition and temperature that is between the liquidus and solidus line.