Comments Concerning a Simple Equation of State of the Van Der Waals Form

When the Carnahan-Starling equation of state for hard spheres is combined with a simple attractive term, the molecular size parameter b for argon (as obtained from critical data) is much closer to the “correct” value than that obtained from the empirical Redlich-Kwong equation For the critical isotherm for argon, the best simple form of the attractive term lies between the two common forms, proposed by van der Waals and by Redlich. At constant temperature, the attractive contribution to the compressibility factor is proportional to (v + 0.2b)−1 where v is the molar volume. This proportionality is in agreement with results for a square-well fluid recently reported by Sandier.