phase rule [′fāz rül]
Phase rule
where C is the number of chemical species present at equilibrium, P is the number of phases, and M is the number of independent chemical reactions. Here phase is used to indicate a homogeneous, mechanically separable portion of the system, and the term independent reactions refers to the smallest number of chemical reactions which, upon forming various linear combinations, includes all reactions which occur among the species present. The number of independent state variables F is referred to as the degrees of freedom or variance of the system. See Thermodynamic processes
(physical chemistry)
Phase rule
A relationship used to determine the number of state variables F, usually chosen from among temperature, pressure, and species compositions in each phase, which must be specified to fix the thermodynamic state of a system in equilibrium. It was derived by J. Willard Gibbs. The phase rule (in the absence of electric, magnetic, and gravitational phenomena) is given by the equation below,
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