Calcium carbonate ionic strength effect

To illustrate the effect of ionic strength on degradation of calcium carbonate we have calculated the solubility of calcium carbonate in deionized water, acid at pH = 4.0 and acid rain at pH = 4.0 with an ionic strength of 7.2 x 10 in the absence of CO2. The results of these calculations are shown in Table 2 and are plotted in Figure 3. These data show that the ionic strength contribution of sea spray and other atmospheric sources are as significant as the neutralization reaction with acid at pH = 4.0 in the degradation of coquina by acid rainfall. 

The required attributes listed above effectively limit the range of primary buffers available to between pH 3 and 10 (at 25 °C). Calcium hydroxide and potassium tetraoxalate tire excluded because the contribution of hydroxide or hydrogen ions to the ionic strength is significant. Also excluded are the nitrogen bases of the type BH+ (such as tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane and piperazine phosphate) and the zwitterionic buffers (e.g. HEPES and MOPS (10)). These do not comply because either the Bates-Gu enheim convention is not applicable, or the liquid junction potentials are high. This means the choice of primary standards is restricted to buffers derived from oxy-carbon, -phosphorus, -boron and mono, di- and tri-protic carboxylic acids. The uncertainties (11) associated with Harned cell measurements are calculated (1) to be 0.004 in pH at NMIs, with typical variation between batches of primary standard buffers of 0.003. 

In this section, a novel and simple predictive tool is presented to estimate the formation of calcium carbonate scaling as a function of pH, temperature, ionic strength of the solution, calcium cation concentration, bicarbonate anion concentration, and carbon dioxide mole fraction when the water mixture is saturated with a gas containing COj, to evaluate the effect of solution conditions on the tendency and extent of the precipitation. The proposed method covers calcium cation concentrations, or bicarbonate anion concentrations up to 10 000 mg/L, temperatures up to 90 °C, total ionic strength up to 3.6, and pH values ranging between 5.5 and 8. 

---