In this paper, we show that both continuous phase transitions
of
liquid water, the liquid–gas and the liquid–liquid,
can be articulated within a single thermodynamic analytical formalism.
This result follows from a combination of the two-liquid model (TLM),
recently confirmed for water, with the idea of a thermal-dependent
excluded volume, v
e
,
concept introduced by van der Waals, in his famous state equation.
Starting from the fundamentals of thermodynamics, it will be shown
that the TLM naturally leads to the idea of an extensive thermal-dependent v
e
that acts as a parameter
of the sample thermodynamic potentials. This procedure effectively
separates the thermodynamics of the system into two parts: the first
concerns the clusters’ thermodynamics, taken as wandering particles,
and the second concerns the thermal behavior of its internal structure
(geometry and number of particles). From this result, we demonstrate
that the condition of mechanical instability leads to not one but
two critical points, each happening in one of the above-described
parts of the system.