Temperature mass action constant calculations

Fig. 2.7. Calculated mass action constant K(T) serves to estimate dimer concentrations in hydrogen, methane, carbon dioxide and sulfur hexafluoride as function of temperature.

We have only discussed two of the sixteen fields given in the figure, the prediction of the direction in which a reaction can proceed spontaneously by means of the chemical potential and the temperature and pressure dependence of p and its application. A next step would be to go over to mass action, i.e., the concentration dependence of p. This leads directly to the deduction of the mass action law, calculation of equilibrium constants, solubilities, and many other data. An expansion of the concept to colligative phenomena, diffusion processes, surface effects, electrochemical processes, etc., is easily possible. Furthermore, the same tools allow solving problems even at the atomic and molecular level that are usually treated by quantum statistical methods. 

Calculation of Mass Action Constant at Different Temperatures... 

The law of mass action, the laws of kinetics, and the laws of distillation all operate simultaneously in a process of this type. Esterification can occur only when the concentrations of the acid and alcohol are in excess of equiUbrium values otherwise, hydrolysis must occur. The equations governing the rate of the reaction and the variation of the rate constant (as a function of such variables as temperature, catalyst strength, and proportion of reactants) describe the kinetics of the Hquid-phase reaction. The usual distillation laws must be modified, since most esterifications are somewhat exothermic and reaction is occurring on each plate. Since these kinetic considerations are superimposed on distillation operations, each plate must be treated separately by successive calculations after the extent of conversion has been deterrnined (see Distillation). 

WATEQ2 consists of a main program and 12 subroutines and is patterned similarly to WATEQF ( ). WATEQ2 (the main program) uses input data to set the bounds of all major arrays and calls most of the other procedures. INTABLE reads the thermodynamic data base and prints the thermodynamic data and other pertinent information, such as analytical expressions for effect of temperature on selected equilibrium constants. PREP reads the analytical data, converts concentrations to the required units, calculates temperature-dependent coefficients for the Debye-HKckel equation, and tests for charge balance of the input data. SET initializes values of individual species for the iterative mass action-mass balance calculations, and calculates the equilibrium constants as a function of the input temperature. MAJ EL calculates the activity coefficients and, on the first iteration only, does a partial speciation of the major anions, and performs mass action-mass balance calculations on Li, Cs, Rb, Ba, Sr and the major cations. TR EL performs these calculations on the minor cations, Mn, Cu, Zn, Cd, Pb, Ni, Ag, and As. SUMS performs the anion mass... 

Guldberg and Waage found that the equilibrium concentrations for every reaction system that they studied obeyed this relationship. That is, when the observed equilibrium concentrations are inserted into the equilibrium expression constructed from the law of mass action for a given reaction, the result is a constant (at a given temperature and assuming ideal behavior). Thus the value of the equilibrium constant for a given reaction system can be calculated from the measured concentrations of reactants and products present at equilibrium, a procedure illustrated in Example 6.1. 

MTien several solid substances react with one another in presence of a solvent, the condition for equilibrium may be obtained as follows. In homogeneous solutions which contain definite, although possibly very minute, concentrations of all the molecules taking part in the reaction, the law of mass action will hold, provided that the concentrations are not too high. At constant temperature, however, the concentrations of all the substances which are present in the solid state are determined by their solubilities. The constant values of these concentrations may therefore be included in the equilibrium constant, like the vapour pressures of the solid substances in the calculations of the previous paragraph. For reactions between solids and solutions the law of mass action therefore assumes the same form as for homogeneous solutions, viz. ah... 

Equation (21) is not strictly valid for calculating the heat of micellization because certain assumptions made in its derivation do not hold here. The equation implies that the micelle is at equilibrium near cmc in a standard state [27,54]. However, micelles are not definite stoichiometric entities but aggregates of different sizes that are in dynamic equilibrium with themselves and surfactant monomers. The aggregation number may vary with temperature. An extended mass action model describes micellization as a multiple equilibrium characterized by a series of equilibrium constants (see Section 6.2). Because these equilibrium constants cannot be determined, the micellar equilibrium is usually described by... 

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