Prediction of the Thermodynamic Properties and Phase Diagrams of Silicate Systems-Evaluation of the FeO-MgO-SiO2 System.

Molten silicates are ordered solutions whose excess Gibbs energies cannot be well represented by the usual polynomial representation of deviations from ideal solution behavior.An adaptation of quasichemical theory has been proposed which is capable of describing the properties of ordered solutions and of representing the measuredproperties of binary silicates over broad ranges of composition and temperatures.For simple silicates such as the MgO-FeO-SiO.ternary system in which silica is the only acid component, a combining rule generally leads to good predictions of the thermodynamic properties of ternary (and probably higher order) solutions from those of the binaries.In basic solutions, these predictions are consistent with those of the Conformal lonic Solution Theory.Our results indicate that our approach could provide a potentially powerful tool for representing and predicting the thermodynamicproperties of multicomponent molten silicates.A complete critical evaluation of the thermodynamicproperties and phase diagrams of the FeO-MgO,FeO-SiO., MgO-SiO.and FeO-MgO-SiO.systems is presented in which the modified quasichemical model is used for the liquid phase.Optimized equations for the thermodynamic properties of all phases are obtained which reproduce all thermodynamicand phasediagram data to within experimental error limits from 25'C to liquidus temperatures at all compositions.The optimized thermodynamicproperties and phase diagrams are the best estimates presently available.