Comment on “Phase Behavior of Ternary Mixtures of Water–Vanillin–Ethanol for Vanillin Extraction via Dissipative Particle Dynamics”

This comment addresses a few issues of concern regarding the use of Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) to characterize molecular phase diagrams and identify phase morphologies in the recent paper by Son et al. (J. Chem. Eng. Data 2014, 59, 3036–3040). While useful solubility modeling and self-assembly can be aided by various coarse graining strategies including DPD, one should employ as well complementary techniques and ensure consistency of conclusions through experiments or readily available tools. We believe the approach and parametrization scheme is inappropriate to the system of study resulting in unrealistic results and interpretations.