Individual activity coefficient

Table 8.1 Individual Activity Coefficients of Ions In Water at 25°C 8.3...

Table 8.4 Individual Ionic Activity Coefficients at Higher Ionic Strengths at...

Although it is not possible to measure an individual ionic activity coefficient,, it may be estimated from the following equation of the Debye-Hiickel theory ... 

The activity of any ion, a = 7m, where y is the activity coefficient and m is the molaHty (mol solute/kg solvent). Because it is not possible to measure individual ionic activities, a mean ionic activity coefficient, 7, is used to define the activities of all ions in a solution. The convention used in most of the Hterature to report the mean ionic activity coefficients for sulfuric acid is based on the assumption that the acid dissociates completely into hydrogen and sulfate ions. This assumption leads to the foUowing formula for the activity of sulfuric acid. 

Select now a second neutral indicator base C that is weaker than B by roughly an order of magnitude thus, a solvent can be found of such acidity that a significant fraction of both B and C will be protonated, but this will no longer be a dilute aqueous solution, so the individual activity coefficients will in general deviate from unity. For this solution containing low concentrations of both B and C,... 

The local activity coefficients are the same for all ions in the membrane, or the individual activity coefficients in the membrane are the same for all cations and... 

Equations (7.35) and (7.36) can be used to calculate the activity coefficients of individual ions. However, as we discussed in Chapter 6, 7+ and 7- cannot be measured individually. Instead, 7 , the mean ionic activity coefficient for the electrolyte, M +AV-, given by... 

This is an equation for calculating the activity coefficient of an individual ion m (i.e., a parameter inaccessible to experimental determination). Let us, therefore, change to the values of mean ionic activity. By definition [see Eq. (3.27)],... 

In contrast with the individual ion activity coefficients fit the mean activity coefficient ft can be measured, calculation of which can be achieved through eqn. 2.46 as follows ... 

Because of the electroneutrality condition, the individual ion activities and activity coefficients cannot be measured without additional extrather-modynamic assumptions (Section 1.3). Thus, mean quantities are defined for dissolved electrolytes, for all concentration scales. E.g., for a solution of a single strong binary electrolyte as... 

Thermodynamics describes the behaviour of systems in terms of quantities and functions of state, but cannot express these quantities in terms of model concepts and assumptions on the structure of the system, inter-molecular forces, etc. This is also true of the activity coefficients thermodynamics defines these quantities and gives their dependence on the temperature, pressure and composition, but cannot interpret them from the point of view of intermolecular interactions. Every theoretical expression of the activity coefficients as a function of the composition of the solution is necessarily based on extrathermodynamic, mainly statistical concepts. This approach makes it possible to elaborate quantitatively the theory of individual activity coefficients. Their values are of paramount importance, for example, for operational definition of the pH and its potentiometric determination (Section 3.3.2), for potentiometric measurement with ion-selective electrodes (Section 6.3), in general for all the systems where liquid junctions appear (Section 2.5.3), etc. 

If the validity of Eq. (1.3.31) is assumed for the mean activity coefficient of a given electrolyte even in a mixture of electrolytes, and quantity a is calculated for the same measured electrolyte in various mixtures, then different values are, in fact, obtained which differ for a single total solution molality depending on the relative representation and individual properties of the ionic components. 

A number of authors have suggested various mixing rules, according to which the quantity a could be calculated for a measured electrolyte in a mixture, starting from the known individual parameters of the single electrolytes and the known composition of the solution. However, none of the proposed mixing relationships has found broad application. Thus, the question about the dependence of the mean activity coefficients of the individual electrolytes on the relative contents of the various electrolytic components was solved in a different way. 

Guggenheim used this assumption to employ Eq. (1.3.38) for the activity coefficient of the electrolyte, where the product aB was set equal to unity and the specific interaction between oppositely charged ions was accounted for in the term CL Consider a mixture of two uni-univalent electrolytes AlBl and AUBU with overall molality m and individual representations yl = milm and yn = mulm, where mx and mn are molalities of individual electrolytes. According to Guggenheim,... 

Two types of methods are used to measure activity coefficients. Potentiometric methods that measure the mean activity coefficient of the dissolved electrolyte directly will be described in Section 3.3.3. However, in galvanic cells with liquid junctions the electrodes respond to individual ion activities (Section 3.2). This is particularly true for pH measurement (Sections 3.3.2 and 6.3). In these cases, extrathermodynamical procedures defining individual ion activities must be employed. 

This notional definition of the pH scale can, however, not be used for practical measurements, as it contains the activity coefficients of the individual ions, y(H30+). 

In view of the term containing activity coefficients, the acidity function depends on the ionic type of the indicator. The definition of H0 is combined with the assumption that the ratio Yb/Ybh+ is constant for all indicators of the same charge type (in the present case the base is electroneutral hence the index 0 in //0). Thus, the acidity function does not depend on each individual indicator but on the series of indicators. 

The potentiometric measurement of physicochemical quantities such as dissociation constants, activity coefficients and thus also pH is accompanied by a basic problem, leading to complications that can be solved only if certain assumptions are accepted. Potentiometric measurements in cells without liquid junctions lead to mean activity or mean activity coefficient values (of an electrolyte), rather than the individual ionic values. 

It has been emphasized repeatedly that the individual activity coefficients cannot be measured experimentally. However, these values are required for a number of purposes, e.g. for calibration of ion-selective electrodes. Thus, a conventional scale of ionic activities must be defined on the basis of suitably selected standards. In addition, this definition must be consistent with the definition of the conventional activity scale for the oxonium ion, i.e. the definition of the practical pH scale. Similarly, the individual scales for the various ions must be mutually consistent, i.e. they must satisfy the relationship between the experimentally measurable mean activity of the electrolyte and the defined activities of the cation and anion in view of Eq. (1.1.11). Thus, by using galvanic cells without transport, e.g. a sodium-ion-selective glass electrode and a Cl -selective electrode in a NaCl solution, a series of (NaCl) is obtained from which the individual ion activity aNa+ is determined on the basis of the Bates-Guggenheim convention for acr (page 37). Table 6.1 lists three such standard solutions, where pNa = -logflNa+, etc. 

If the molecular species of the solute present in solution is the same as those present in the crystals (as would be the case for nonelectrolytes), then to a first approximation, the solubility of each enantiomer in a conglomerate is unaffected by the presence of the other enantiomer. If the solutions are not dilute, however, the presence of one enantiomer will influence the activity coefficient of the other and thereby affect its solubility to some extent. Thus, the solubility of a racemic conglomerate is equal to twice that of the individual enantiomer. This relation is known as Meyerhoffer s double solubility rule [147]. If the solubilities are expressed as mole fractions, then the solubility curves are straight lines, parallel to sides SD and SL of the triangle in Fig. 24. 

The model calculated in this manner predicts that two minerals, alunite [KA13(0H)6(S04)2] and anhydrite (CaSC>4), are supersaturated in the fluid at 175 °C, although neither mineral is observed in the district. This result is not surprising, given that the fluid s salinity exceeds the correlation limit for the activity coefficient model (Chapter 8). The observed composition in this case (Table 22.1), furthermore, actually represents the average of fluids from many inclusions and hence a mixture of hydrothermal fluids present over a range of time. As noted in Chapter 6, mixtures of fluids tend to be supersaturated, even if the individual fluids are not. 

Reactions in solution proceed in a similar manner, by elementary steps, to those in the gas phase. Many of the concepts, such as reaction coordinates and energy barriers, are the same. The two theories for elementary reactions have also been extended to liquid-phase reactions. The TST naturally extends to the liquid phase, since the transition state is treated as a thermodynamic entity. Features not present in gas-phase reactions, such as solvent effects and activity coefficients of ionic species in polar media, are treated as for stable species. Molecules in a liquid are in an almost constant state of collision so that the collision-based rate theories require modification to be used quantitatively. The energy distributions in the jostling motion in a liquid are similar to those in gas-phase collisions, but any reaction trajectory is modified by interaction with neighboring molecules. Furthermore, the frequency with which reaction partners approach each other is governed by diffusion rather than by random collisions, and, once together, multiple encounters between a reactant pair occur in this molecular traffic jam. This can modify the rate constants for individual reaction steps significantly. Thus, several aspects of reaction in a condensed phase differ from those in the gas phase ... 

All quantities in Eq. (12.6) are measurable The concentrations can be determined by titration, and the combination of chemical potentials in the exponent is the standard Gibbs energy of transfer of the salt, which is measurable, just like the mean ionic activity coefficients, because they refer to an uncharged species. In contrast, the difference in the inner potential is not measurable, and neither are the individual ionic chemical potentials and activity coefficients that appear on the right-hand side of Eq. (12.3). 

The discussion of the defect distribution functions and potentials of average force follows along rather similar fines to that for the activity coefficient. The formal cluster expansions, Eqs. (90)-(91), individual terms of which diverge, must be transformed into another series of closed terms. This can clearly be done by... 

Kielland, J. "Individual Activity Coefficients of Ions in Aqueous Solutions," J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 1937, j>9, 1675-78. 

In this development, attention is focused exclusively on activity coefficients of cation-anion pairs, with no use being made of activity coefficients of individual ions. 

These individual-ion activity coefficients have the desired property of approaching 1 at infinite dilution, because each ratio a,/(m,/m°) approaches 1. However, individual-ion activity coefficients, like individual-ion activities, cannot be determined experimentally. Therefore, it is customary to deal with the mean activity coefficient 7+ and the mean activity a which for a uni-univalent electrolyte can be related to measurable quantities as follows ... 

According to the Debye-Htickel theory, in the limit of the infinitely dilute solution, individual-ion activity coefficients are given by the equation... 

Various empirical relations are available for calculating individual ion activity coefficients [discussed by Stumm and Morgan (1996) for natural waters and Sposito (1984a, b), for soil solutions]. In the calculations in this book I used the Davies equation ... 

The individual activity coefficients calculated from (4.12), suitable for calibration of ISEs for chloride ions, the alkali metal and alkaline earth ions, are given in tables 4.1 and 4.2. Ion activity scales have also been proposed for KF [141], choline chloride [98], for mixtures of electrolytes simulating the composition of the serum and other biological fluids (at 37 °C) [106,107], for alkali metal chlorides in solutions of bovine serum albumine [132] and for mixtures of electrolytes analogous to seawater [140]. 

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