The simple mean free path description of gas transport coefficients accounts for the major observed phenomena, but it is quantitatively unsatisfactory with respect to two major points: the values of numerical constants such as a, a′, a″, and a₁₂ and the description of the molecular collisions that define a mean free path. Indeed, collisions remain a somewhat vague concept except when they are considered to take place between molecules modeled as hard spheres. Improvement has required a different, somewhat indirect, and more mathematical approach through a quantity called the velocity distribution function. This function describes how molecular velocities are distributed on the average: a few very slow molecules, a few very fast ones, and most near some average value—namely, v_rms = (v²)^1/2 = (3kT/2)^1/2. If this function is known, all gas properties can be calculated by using it to obtain various averages. For example, the average momentum carried in a certain direction would give the viscosity. The velocity distribution for a gas at equilibrium was suggested by Maxwell in 1859 and is represented by the familiar bell-shaped curve that describes the normal, or Gaussian, distribution of random variables in large populations. Attempts to support more definitively this result and to extend it to nonequilibrium gases led to the formulation of the Boltzmann equation, which describes how collisions and external forces cause the velocity distribution to change. This equation is difficult to solve in any general sense, but some progress can be made by assuming that the deviations from the equilibrium distribution are small and are proportional to the external influences that cause the deviations, such as temperature, pressure, and composition differences. Even the resulting simpler equations remained unsolved for nearly 50 years until the work of Enskog and Chapman, with a single notable exception. The one case that was solvable dealt with molecules that interact with forces that fall off as the fifth power of their separation (i.e., as 1/r⁵), for which Maxwell found an exact solution. Unfortunately, thermal diffusion happens to be exactly zero for molecules subject to this force law, so that phenomenon was missed.

It was later discovered that it is possible to use the solutions for the 1/r⁵ Maxwell model as a starting point and then calculate successive corrections for more general interactions. Although the calculations quickly increase in complexity, the improvement in accuracy is rapid, unlike the persistence-of-velocities corrections applied in mean free path theory. This refined version of kinetic theory is now highly developed, but it is quite mathematical and is not described here.

Equation of state

To a first approximation, molecule-molecule collisions do not affect the ideal gas equation of state, pv = RT, but real gases at nonzero densities show deviations from this equation that are due to interactions among the molecules. Ever since the great advance made by van der Waals in 1873, an accurate universal formula relating p, v, and T has been sought. No completely satisfactory equation of state has been found, though important advances occurred in the 1970s and ’80s. The only rigorous theoretical result available is an infinite-series expansion in powers of 1/v, known as the virial equation of state:where B(T), C(T), . . . are called the second, third, . . . virial coefficients and depend only on the temperature and the particular gas. The virtue of this equation is that there is a rigorous connection between the virial coefficients and intermolecular forces, and experimental values of B(T) were an early source (and still a useful one) of quantitative information on intermolecular forces. The drawback of the virial equation of state is that it is an infinite series and becomes essentially useless at high densities, which in practice are those greater than about the critical density. Also, the equation is wanting in that it does not predict condensation.

The most practical approaches to the equation of state for real fluids remain the versions of the principle of corresponding states first proposed by van der Waals.

Transport properties

Despite many attempts, there is still no satisfactory theory of the transport properties of dense fluids. Even the extension of the Boltzmann equation to include collisions of more than two bodies is not entirely clear. An important advance was made in 1921 by Enskog, but it is restricted to hard spheres and has not been extended to real molecules except in an empirical way to fit experimental measurements.

Attempts to develop a virial type of expansion in 1/v for the transport coefficients have failed in a surprising way. A formal theory was formulated, but, when the virial coefficients were evaluated for the tractable case of hard spheres, an infinite result was obtained for the coefficient of the 1/v² term. This is a signal that a virial expansion is not accurate in a mathematical sense, and subsequent research showed that the error arose from a neglected term of the form (1/v²)ln(1/v). It remains unknown how many similar problematic mathematical terms exist in the theory. Transport coefficients of dense fluids are usually described by some empirical extension of the Enskog hard-sphere theory or more commonly by some version of a principle of corresponding states. Much work clearly remains to be done.