Bromleys Water Activity

In 1973, Bromley (B3) presented the following equation for the calculation of the osmotic coefficient of a single electrolyte solution at 25 C  

Ay the Debye-Hiickel constant, log e basis 4 - the osmotic coefficient 

The resulting osmotic coefficient can then be used to calculate the water activity, a , of the single electrolyte solution  

In order to calculate the water activity of a multicomponent solution, it is suggested that the hypothetical pure solution water activities for the electrolytes in solution are calculated as above. The mixed solution water activity could then be calculated using a method suggested by Meissner and Kusik (M7)  

The residue term equals zero for solutions of like charged electrolytes. 

---

In applying this equation to multi-solute systems, the ionic concentrations are of sufficient magnitude that molecule-ion and ion-ion interactions must be considered. Edwards et al. (6) used a method proposed by Bromley (J7) for the estimation of the B parameters. The model was found to be useful for the calculation of multi-solute equilibria in the NH3+H5S+H2O and NH3+CO2+H2O systems. However, because of the assumptions regarding the activity of the water and the use of only two-body interaction parameters, the model is suitable only up to molecular concentrations of about 2 molal. As well the temperature was restricted to the range 0° to 100 oc because of the equations used for the Henry1s constants and the dissociation constants. In a later study, Edwards et al. (8) extended the correlation to higher concentrations (up to 10 - 20 molal) and higher temperatures (0° to 170 °C). In this work the activity coefficients of the electrolytes were calculated from an expression due to Pitzer (9) ... 

The activity of the water is derived from this expression by use of the Gibbs-Duhem equation. To utilize this equation, the interaction parameters fif ) and BH must be estimated for moleculemolecule, molecule-ion and ion-ion interactions. Again the method of Bromley was used for this purpose. Fugacity coefficienls for the vapor phase were determined by the method of Nakamura et al. (JO). 

For applications where the ionic strength is as high as 6 M, the ion activity coefficients can be calculated using expressions developed by Bromley (4 ). These expressions retain the first term of equation 9 and additional terms are added, to improve the fit. The expressions are much more complex than equation 9 and require the molalities of the dissolved species to calculate the ion activity coefficients. If all of the molalities of dissolved species are used to calculate the ion activity coefficients, then the expressions are quite unwieldy. However, for the applications discussed in this paper many of the dissolved species are of low concentration and only the major dissolved species need be considered in the calculation of ion activity coefficients. For lime or limestone applications with a high chloride coal and a tight water balance, calcium chloride is the dominant dissolved specie. For this situation Kerr (5) has presented these expressions for the calculation of ion activity coefficients. 

As the basis for predicting ionic activity coefficients we chose to adopt an. empirical modification of Bromley s ( 5) extension of the Debye-Huckel model. The mean activity coefficient of a pure salt in water is given by... 

---