Vapor–liquid phase equilibria of binary tin–antimony system in vacuum distillation: Experimental investigation and calculation

• Based on the MIVM, we calculated the activities of components of Sn–Sb alloy.
• The VLE phase diagrams of Sn–Sb alloy in vacuum distillation were calculated.
• Experiments on separation of Sb from Sn by vacuum distillation were conducted.
• The calculated results are in reasonable agreement with the experimental data.

Vacuum distillation experiments were conducted for tin-antimony alloy (Sn–Sb alloy) under the system pressure of 5 Pa. The content of Sb (mole fraction) in crude Sn, viz., xSb was reduced from 0.5000 to 0.0619 in a single stage distillation process under the condition of residual pressure of 5–10 Pa, distillation temperature of 1373 K and distillation time of 60 min. The activity coefficients of components of Sn–Sb alloy were calculated by using the molecular interaction volume model (MIVM), and the calculated average relative deviation and the average standard deviation were ±0.00039 and ± 0.173%, respectively for both Sn and Sb. The vapor–liquid equilibrium (VLE) phase diagrams, including the temperature-composition (T-x) and pressure-composition (p-x) diagrams of Sn–Sb alloy in vacuum distillation were calculated based on VLE theory and the MIVM. A reasonable agreement between the calculated results and the experimental data indicates that VLE phase diagrams obtained by this method are reliable. The VLE phase diagrams of alloys will provide an effective and convenient way for the designing of the process parameters of industrial production of vacuum metallurgy, and for the prediction of the needed product component dependence of temperature and pressure during the process of vacuum distillation.