Temperature, Pressure, and Concentration Derivatives of Nonpolar Gas Hydration: Impact on the Heat Capacity, Temperature of Maximum Density, and Speed of Sound of Aqueous Mixtures.

Abstract

The hydrophobic effect is an umbrella term encompassing a number of solvation phenomena associated with solutions of nonpolar species in water, including the following: a meager solubility opposed by entropy at room temperature; large positive hydration heat capacities; positive shifts in the temperature of maximum density of aqueous mixtures; increases in the speed of sound of dilute aqueous mixtures; and negative volumes of association between interacting solutes. Here we present a molecular simulation study of nonpolar gas hydration over the temperature range 273.15-373.15 K and a pressure range -500 to 1000 bar to investigate the interrelationships between distinct hydrophobic phenomena. We develop a new free energy correlation for the solute chemical potentials founded on the Tait equation description of the equation-of-state of liquid water. This analytical correlation is shown to provide a quantitatively accurate description of nonpolar gas hydration over the entire range of thermodynamic state points simulated, with an error of ∼0.02 kBT or lower in the fitted chemical potentials. Our simulations and the correlation accurately reproduce many of the available experimental results for the hydration of the solutes examined here. Moreover, the correlation reproduces the characteristic entropies of hydration, temperature dependence of the hydration heat capacity, perturbations in the temperature of maximum density, and changes in the speed of sound. While negative volumes of association result from pairwise interactions in solution, beyond the limits of our simulations performed at infinite dilution, we discuss how our correlation could be supplemented with second virial coefficient information to expand to finite concentrations. In total, this work demonstrates that many distinct phenomena associated with the hydrophobic effect can be captured within a single thermodynamically consistent correlation for solute hydration free energies.