Solubilities, Fugacities and All That in Solution Chemistry

Henry's Law Constants and Vapor-Liquid Distribution Coefficients of Noncondensable Gases Dissolved in Carbon Dioxide

The accurate determination of the solubilities of the typical impurity gases present in captured CO₂ in the carbon capture, utilization, and storage chain is an essential prerequisite for the successful modeling of the CO₂ stream thermodynamic properties. In this paper, Henry's law constants and the vapor-liquid distribution coefficients of six noncondensable gases, namely, N₂, O₂, H₂, CH₄, Ar, and CO, at infinite dilution in liquid CO₂ are derived based on published vapor-liquid equilibrium data at temperatures ranging from the triple point (216.59 K) to the critical point (304.13 K) of CO₂. The temperature dependence of Henry's law constants of the six gases is correlated using approximating functions previously proposed for aqueous solutions. A correlation that provides the best fit for the Henry constants data for all the six gases, with the accuracy (absolute average deviation %) of 4.2%, is recommended. For N₂, O₂, H₂, Ar, and CO, the combined standard uncertainty in the derived Henry constants is less than 6%, whereas for CH₄, due to a larger deviation between the utilized data, the uncertainty is less than 18%. Analysis of the temperature variation of the vapor-liquid distribution coefficient at infinite dilution shows that when all the six gases are present in the CO₂ stream, separation of N₂, O₂, Ar, and CO from CO₂ can be problematic due to their similar volatilities, while the distinct volatilities of H₂ and CH₄ at lower temperatures make their separation from CO₂ easier.

Solutions, in Particular Dilute Solutions of Nonelectrolytes: A Review

The liquid state is one of the three principal states of matter and arguably the most important one; and liquid mixtures represent a large research field of profound theoretical and practical interest. This topic is of importance in many areas of the applied sciences, such as in chemical engineering, geochemistry, the environmental sciences, biophysics and biomedical technology. First, I will concisely present a review of important concepts from classical thermodynamics of nonelectrolyte solutions; this will be followed by a survey of (semi-)empirical approaches to representing the composition and temperature dependence of selected thermodynamic mixture properties, and finally the focus will be on dilute binary nonelectrolyte solutions where one component, a supercritical solute, is present in much smaller quantity than the other component, called the solvent. Partial molar properties in the limit of infinite dilution (indicated by a superscript ∞) are of particular interest. For instance, activity coefficients (Lewis–Randall (LR) convention) are customarily used to characterize mixing behavior, and infinite-dilution values $$\gamma_{i}^{{{\text{LR,}}\infty }}$$ γ i LR, ∞ provide a convenient route for obtaining binary parameters for several popular solution models. When discussing solute (j)—solvent (i) interactions in solutions where the solute is supercritical, the Henry fugacity $$h_{j,i} \left( {T,P} \right)$$ h j , i T , P , also known as Henry’s law (HL) constant, is a measurable thermodynamic key quantity. Its temperature dependence yields information on the partial molar enthalpy change on solution $$\Delta H_{j}^{\infty } \left( {T,P} \right)$$ Δ H j ∞ T , P , while its pressure dependence yields information on the partial molar volume $$V_{j}^{{{\text{L,}}\infty }} \left( {T,P} \right)$$ V j L, ∞ T , P of solute j in the liquid phase (superscript L). I will clarify issues frequently overlooked, touch upon solubility data reduction and correlation, report a few recent high-precision experimental results on dilute aqueous solutions of supercritical nonelectrolytes, and show the equivalency of results for caloric quantities (e.g. $$\Delta H_{j}^{\infty }$$ Δ H j ∞ ) obtained via van ’t Hoff analysis of high-precision solubility data with directly measured calorimetric data.

On the Solvation Thermodynamics Involving Species with Large Intermolecular Asymmetries: A Rigorous Molecular-Based Approach to Simple Systems with Unconventionally Complex Behaviors

This work deals with the solvation thermodynamics of systems containing extreme intermolecular interaction asymmetries, such as binary mixtures comprising ideal gas species plus other real species, and analyzes the composition dependence of relevant solvation properties from a rigorous molecular-based theoretical viewpoint. It focuses on the effect of large intermolecular interaction asymmetries, involving simple model species for which we have available rigorous results, to advance our understanding of the true molecular-based origin of their unconventional solvation behavior. This effort involves a statistical mechanics approach to identify the thermodynamic constraints and microstructural manifestation underlying the nonmonotonous composition behavior of the species' partial molar properties, as well as to describe formally the explicit link between the intermolecular asymmetries and the observed anomalous behavior. The outcome of the analysis provides sound support to the depiction of the solvation of a weakly interacting solute in a real solvent, a scenario that facilitates the molecular thermodynamic interpretation of gas solvation characterized by low solubility and thermodynamic stability gaps. Moreover, this work illustrates direct comparisons between real aqueous systems and the ideal gas-aqueous system counterparts to highlight and discuss the usefulness of invoking the ideal gas species as a reference solute to gain understanding of the solvation of real gas species.

On the Solute-Induced Structure-Making/Breaking Effect: Rigorous Links among Microscopic Behavior, Solvation Properties, and Solution Non-Ideality

We studied the solute-induced perturbation of the solvent environment around a solute species from a microscopic viewpoint and propose a novel approach to the understanding of the structure-making/breaking process, regardless of the type and nature of the solute-solvent interactions. Based on the Kirkwood-Buff fluctuation formalism, we present a rigorous statistical mechanics description of the evolution of the solvent structure around the solute, analyze its response to small perturbations of the ( TP) state conditions and composition of the system, and make direct connections between a few equivalent micro- and macroscopic manifestations as probes for, and targets of, experimental measurements. We illustrate the analysis with theoretical results from integral equation calculations of model fluids and experimental evidence from available data for a variety of aqueous electrolyte and nonelectrolyte real fluid solutions. Finally, we provide a critical discussion about the inadequacy underlying a widely used de facto criterion for the classification of structure-making/breaking solutes.

A Comparison of QM/MM Simulations with and without the Drude Oscillator Model Based on Hydration Free Energies of Simple Solutes

Maintaining a proper balance between specific intermolecular interactions and non-specific solvent interactions is of critical importance in molecular simulations, especially when predicting binding affinities or reaction rates in the condensed phase. The most rigorous metric for characterizing solvent affinity are solvation free energies, which correspond to a transfer from the gas phase into solution. Due to the drastic change of the electrostatic environment during this process, it is also a stringent test of polarization response in the model. Here, we employ both the CHARMM fixed charge and polarizable force fields to predict hydration free energies of twelve simple solutes. The resulting classical ensembles are then reweighted to obtain QM/MM hydration free energies using a variety of QM methods, including MP2, Hartree⁻Fock, density functional methods (BLYP, B3LYP, M06-2X) and semi-empirical methods (OM2 and AM1 ). Our simulations test the compatibility of quantum-mechanical methods with molecular-mechanical water models and solute Lennard⁻Jones parameters. In all cases, the resulting QM/MM hydration free energies were inferior to purely classical results, with the QM/MM Drude force field predictions being only marginally better than the QM/MM fixed charge results. In addition, the QM/MM results for different quantum methods are highly divergent, with almost inverted trends for polarizable and fixed charge water models. While this does not necessarily imply deficiencies in the QM models themselves, it underscores the need to develop consistent and balanced QM/MM interactions. Both the QM and the MM component of a QM/MM simulation have to match, in order to avoid artifacts due to biased solute⁻solvent interactions. Finally, we discuss strategies to improve the convergence and efficiency of multi-scale free energy simulations by automatically adapting the molecular-mechanics force field to the target quantum method.

1-Butanol as a Solvent for Efficient Extraction of Polar Compounds from Aqueous Medium: Theoretical and Practical Aspects

The extraction of polar molecules from aqueous solution is a challenging task in organic synthesis. 1-Butanol has been used sporadically as an eluent for polar molecules, but it is unclear which molecular features drive its efficiency. Here, we employ free energy simulations to study the partitioning of 15 solutes between water and 1-butanol. The simulations demonstrate that the high affinity of polar molecules to the wet 1-butanol phase is associated with its nanostructure. Small inverse micelles of water are able to accommodate polar solutes and locally mimic an aqueous environment. We verify the simulations based on partition coefficients between water and 1-octanol, and include a blind prediction of the water/1-butanol partition coefficient of cyclohexane-1,2-diol. The calculations are in excellent agreement with experiment, reaching root-mean-square deviations below 0.7 kcal/mol. Actual extractions of cyclohexane-1,2-diol from buffer solutions that mimic cell lysates and suspensions in biocatalytic reactions further exemplify our findings. The yields highlight that extractions with 1-butanol can be significantly more efficient than the conventional protocol based on ethyl acetate.