Group Additivity Method

A similar technique is to derive a group additivity method. In this method, a contribution for each functional group must be determined. The contributions for the functional groups composing the molecule are then added. This is usually done from computations on a whole list of molecules using a htting technique, similar to that employed in QSPR. 

Another common approach is to do a calculation with the solvent included in some approximate manner. The simplest way to do this is to include the solvent as a continuum with a given dielectric constant. There are quite a few variations on this technique, only the most popular of which are included in the following sections. 

The solvent accessible surface area (SASA) method is built around the assumption that the greatest amount of interaction with the solvent is in the area very close to the solute molecule. This is accounted for by determining a surface area for each atom or group of atoms that is in contact with the solvent. The free energy of solvation AG° is then computed by 

This method does not attempt to distinguish between the various energy contributions. The surface tension parameter acts to include all interactions as much as possible. There are a number of algorithms for implementing this method, most of which differ in the means for determining the surface area associated with a particular group. This method is particularly popular for very large molecules, which can only be modeled by molecular mechanics. 

The Poisson equation describes the electrostatic interaction between an arbitrary charge density p(r) and a continuum dielectric. It states that the electrostatic potential ([) is related to the charge density and the dielectric permitivity z by 

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Group additivity methods must be derived as a consistent set. It is not correct to combine fragments from different group additivity techniques, even for the same property. This additivity approximation essentially ignores effects due to the location of one functional group relative to another. Some of these methods have a series of corrections for various classes of compounds to correct for this. Other methods use some sort of topological description. 

Surface tension is usually predicted using group additivity methods for neat liquids. It is much more difficult to predict the surface tension of a mixture, especially when surfactants are involved. Very large molecular dynamics or Monte Carlo simulations can also be used. Often, it is easier to measure surface tension in the laboratory than to compute it. 

Completely ah initio predictions can be more accurate than any experimental result currently available. This is only true of properties that depend on the behavior of isolated molecules. Colligative properties, which are due to the interaction between molecules, can be computed more reliably with methods based on thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, structure-activity relationships, or completely empirical group additivity methods. 

An example of using one predicted property to predict another is predicting the adsorption of chemicals in soil. This is usually done by first predicting an octanol water partition coelficient and then using an equation that relates this to soil adsorption. This type of property-property relationship is most reliable for monofunctional compounds. Structure-property relationships, and to a lesser extent group additivity methods, are more reliable for multifunctional compounds than this type of relationship. 

The primary problem with explicit solvent calculations is the significant amount of computer resources necessary. This may also require a significant amount of work for the researcher. One solution to this problem is to model the molecule of interest with quantum mechanics and the solvent with molecular mechanics as described in the previous chapter. Other ways to make the computational resource requirements tractable are to derive an analytic equation for the property of interest, use a group additivity method, or model the solvent as a continuum. 

The development of group additivity methods is very similar to the development of a QSPR method. Group additivity methods can be useful for properties that are additive by nature, such as the molecular volume. For most properties, QSPR is superior to group additivity techniques. 

The simplest empirical calculations use a group additivity method. These calculations can be performed very quickly on small desktop computers. They are most accurate for a small organic molecule with common functional groups. The prediction is only as good as the aspects of molecular structure being par-... 

This trend is well reflected by standard group additivity methods. 

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