Henry's Law - Standard Chemical Potential

Standard Chemical Potential

Henry's law has been shown to apply to a wide range of solutes in the limit of "infinite dilution" (x→0), including non-volatile substances such as sucrose or even sodium chloride. In these cases, it is necessary to state the law in terms of chemical potentials. For a solute in an ideal dilute solution, the chemical potential depends on the concentration:

, where for a volatile solute; co = 1 mol/L.

For non-ideal solutions, the activity coefficient γc depends on the concentration and must be determined at the concentration of interest. The activity coefficient can also be obtained for non-volatile solutes, where the vapor pressure of the pure substance is negligible, by using the Gibbs–Duhem relation:

By measuring the change in vapor pressure (and hence chemical potential) of the solvent, the chemical potential of the solute can be deduced.

The standard state for a dilute solution is also defined in terms of infinite-dilution behavior. Although the standard concentration co is taken to be 1 mol/L by convention, the standard state is a hypothetical solution of 1 mol/L in which the solute has its limiting infinite-dilution properties. This has the effect that all non-ideal behavior is described by the activity coefficient: the activity coefficient at 1 mol/L is not necessarily unity (and is frequently quite different from unity).

All the relations above can also be expressed in terms of molalities b rather than concentrations, e.g.:

, where for a volatile solute; bo = 1 mol/kg.

The standard chemical potential μmo, the activity coefficient γm and the Henry's law constant kH,b all have different numerical values when molalities are used in place of concentrations.

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