Solvents may significantly
affect the phase behavior and kinetics
of chemical reactions. Especially for complex reactions performed
in mixtures of different solvents, it requires a high experimental
effort to quantify these effects. This work focuses on a novel thermodynamic
approach to predict solvent effects on both reaction rates and phase
behavior. We applied this method to the homogeneously catalyzed hydroaminomethylation
of 1-decene in a thermomorphic multiphase system of methanol and n-dodecane. For that purpose, the thermodynamic activities
of the reactants and the liquid–liquid equilibrium of the multicomponent
reaction system were successfully modeled using the Perturbed-Chain
Statistical Associating Fluid Theory (PC-SAFT). An increasing concentration
of n-dodecane in the solvent mixture was predicted
not only to limit the working space for the reaction due to unwanted
phase separation but also to massively reduce the reaction rate. These
results were in good agreement with batch experiments and homogeneity
tests performed in this work. The approach is applicable to a wide
variety of liquid-phase reactions and thus is a valuable tool for
reducing the experimental effort to a minimum.