Chemical Engineering



Solution

Making a saline water solution by dissolving table salt (NaCl) in water

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In chemistry, a solution is a homogeneous mixture composed of two or more substances. In such a mixture, a solute is dissolved in another substance, known as a solvent. Usually, the substance present in a greater amount is considered as the solvent. Solutions may have multiple solvents. Gases may dissolve in liquids, for example, carbon dioxide or oxygen in water. Liquids may dissolve in other liquids. Gases can combine with other gases to form mixtures, rather than solutions.[1] All solutions are characterized by interactions between the solvent phase and solute molecules or ions that result in a net decrease in free energy. Under such a definition, gases typically cannot function as solvents, since in the gas phase interactions between molecules are minimal due to the large distances between the molecules. This lack of interaction is the reason gases can expand freely and the presence of these interactions is the reason liquids do not expand.

Examples of solid solutions are alloys and certain minerals and polymers containing plasticizers. The ability of one compound to dissolve in another compound is called solubility. The physical properties of compounds such as melting point and boiling point change when other compounds are added. Together they are called colligative properties. There are several ways to quantify the amount of one compound dissolved in the other compounds collectively called concentration. Examples include molarity, mole fraction, and parts per million (ppm).

Solutions should be distinguished from non-homogeneous mixtures such as colloids and suspensions. When a liquid is able to completely dissolve in another liquid the two liquids are miscible. Two substances that can never mix to form a solution are called immiscible.

Examples of solutions

Many types of solutions exist, as solids, liquids and gases can be both solvent and solute:

|Examples of solutions|Solute |

| |Gas |Liquid |Solid |

|Solvent |Gas |Oxygen and other gases in nitrogen (air) | | |

| |Liquid |Carbon dioxide (CO2) in water (carbonated |Ethanol (common alcohol) |Sucrose (table sugar) in |

| | |water; the visible bubbles, however, are not |in water |water |

| | |the dissolved gas, but only an effervescence;|Various hydrocarbons in |Sodium chloride (table salt) |

| | |the dissolved gas itself is not visible in |each other (petroleum) |in water |

| | |the solution) | |gold in mercury, forming an |

| | |A small fraction of O2 and CO2 in blood | |amalgam |

| | |plasma | |A vast majority of O2 in |

| | | | |blood plasma through a |

| | | | |dipolar bond[2] to hemoglobin|

| |Solid |Hydrogen dissolves rather well in metals; |Hexane in paraffin wax |Steel |

| | |platinum has been studied as a storage |Mercury in gold. |Bronze |

| | |medium. | |Other metal alloys |

Solvation

During solvation, especially when the solvent is polar, a structure forms around it, which allows the solute-solvent interaction to remain stable.

When no more of a solute can be dissolved into a solvent, the solution is said to be saturated. However, the point at which a solution can become saturated can change significantly with different environmental factors, such as temperature, pressure, and contamination. For some solute-solvent combinations a supersaturated solution can be prepared by raising the solubility (for example by increasing the temperature) to dissolve more solute, and then lowering it (for example by cooling).

Usually, the greater the temperature of the solvent, the more of a given solid solute it can dissolve. However, most gases and some compounds exhibit solubility that decrease with increased temperature. Such behavior is a result of an exothermic enthalpy of solution. Some surfactants exhibit this behaviour. The solubility of liquids in liquids is generally less temperature-sensitive than that of solids or gases.

Ideal solutions

Properties of an ideal solution can be calculated by the linear combination of the properties of its components.

If both solute and solvent exist in equal quantities (such as in a 50% ethanol, 50% water solution), the concepts of "solute" and "solvent" become less relevant, but the substance that is more often used as a solvent is normally designated as the solvent (in this example, water).

Concentration.

In chemistry, concentration is the measure of how much of a given substance there is mixed with another substance. This can apply to any sort of chemical mixture, but most frequently the concept is limited to homogeneous solutions, where it refers to the amount of solute in the solvent.

To concentrate a solution, one must add more solute, or reduce the amount of solvent (for instance, by selective evaporation). By contrast, to dilute a solution, one must add more solvent, or reduce the amount of solute.

Unless two substances are fully miscible there exists a concentration at which no further solute will dissolve in a solution. At this point, the solution is said to be saturated. If additional solute is added to a saturated solution, it will not dissolve (except in certain circumstances, when supersaturation may occur). Instead, phase separation will occur, leading to either coexisting phases or a suspension. The point of saturation depends on many variables such as ambient temperature and the precise chemical nature of the solvent and solute.

Analytical concentration includes all the forms of that substance in the solution.

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Qualitative description

[pic]

These glasses containing red dye demonstrate qualitative changes in concentration. The solutions on the left are more dilute, compared to the more concentrated solutions on the right.

Often in informal, non-technical language, concentration is described in a qualitative way, through the use of adjectives such as "dilute" for solutions of relatively low concentration and of others like "concentrated" for solutions of relatively high concentration. Those terms relate the amount of a substance in a mixture to the observable intensity of effects or properties caused by that substance. For example, a practical rule is that the more concentrated a chromatic solution is, the more intensely colored it is (usually).

Quantitative notation

For scientific or technical applications, a qualitative account of concentration is almost never sufficient; therefore quantitative measures are needed to describe concentration. There are a number of different ways to quantitatively express concentration; the most common are listed below. They are based on mass, volume, or both. Depending on what they are based on it is not always trivial to convert one measure to the other, because knowledge of the density might be needed to do so. At times this information may not be available, particularly if the temperature varies.

Mass versus volume

Units of concentration — particularly the most popular one, molarity — require knowledge of a substance's volume, which unlike mass is variable depending on ambient temperature and pressure. In fact (partial) molar volume can even be a function of concentration itself. This is why volumes are not necessarily completely additive when two liquids are added and mixed. Volume-based measures for concentration are therefore not to be recommended for non-dilute solutions or problems where relatively large differences in temperature are encountered (e.g. for phase diagrams).

Unless otherwise stated, all the following measurements of volume are assumed to be at a standard state temperature and pressure (for example 0 degrees Celsius at 1 atmosphere or 101.325 kPa). The measurement of mass does not require such restrictions.

Mass can be determined at a precision of ................
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