Excess property

In chemical thermodynamics, excess properties are properties of mixtures which quantify the non-ideal behavior of real mixtures. They are defined as the difference between the value of the property in a real mixture and the value that would exist in an ideal solution under the same conditions. The most frequently used excess properties are the excess volume, excess enthalpy, and excess chemical potential. The excess volume (V^E), internal energy (U^E), and enthalpy (H^E) are identical to the corresponding mixing properties; that is,

${\displaystyle {\begin{aligned}V^{E}&=\Delta V_{\text{mix}}\\H^{E}&=\Delta H_{\text{mix}}\\U^{E}&=\Delta U_{\text{mix}}\end{aligned}}}$

These relationships hold because the volume, internal energy, and enthalpy changes of mixing are zero for an ideal solution.