Molecular simulation of aqueous electrolytes: Water chemical potential results and Gibbs-Duhem equation consistency tests

Abstract

This paper deals with molecular simulation of the chemical potentials in aqueous electrolyte solutions for the water solvent and its relationship to chemical potential simulation results for the electrolyte solute. We use the Gibbs-Duhem equation linking the concentration dependence of these quantities to test the thermodynamic consistency of separate calculations of each quantity. We consider aqueous NaCl solutions at ambient conditions, using the standard SPC/E force field for water and the Joung-Cheatham force field for the electrolyte. We calculate the water chemical potential using the osmotic ensemble Monte Carlo algorithm by varying the number of water molecules at a constant amount of solute. We demonstrate numerical consistency of these results in terms of the Gibbs-Duhem equation in conjunction with our previous calculations of the electrolyte chemical potential. We present the chemical potential vs molality curves for both solvent and solute in the form of appropriately chosen analytical equations fitted to the simulation data. As a byproduct, in the context of the force fields considered, we also obtain values for the Henry convention standard molar chemical potential for aqueous NaCl using molality as the concentration variable and for the chemical potential of pure SPC/E water. These values are in reasonable agreement with the experimental values.