The Activity Coefficients of High-Charge Electrolytes in Aqueous Dilute Solutions

Abstract

We examine in detail the activity coefficient of higher-charge electrolytes, which, in dilute solutions, can display negative deviations from the Debye–Huckel limiting law instead of the usual positive deviations typical of lower-charge electrolytes. This fact is of considerable relevance for scientists concerned with extrapolation to infinite dilution of thermodynamic and kinetic quantities. It is shown that this “strange” behavior originates merely from the electrostatic interactions between each ion and all other ions, with no necessity of hypothesizing the presence of chemical association; these negative deviations, indeed, are predicted even at the level of the “primitive model” (ions assumed as charged, unpolarizable, rigid spheres inside an unstructured, isotropic, dielectric fluid). Three different approximations for the behavior of the primitive model of low-charge and high-charge electrolytes are tested, in addition to the Debye–Huckel theory; i.e. IPBE (a numerical accurate integration of the Poisson–Boltzmann equation), the Mayer theory of the electrolytes in the so-called DHLL + B2 approximation, and the Bjerrum theory. In the Supporting Information, the fundamentals of the respective algorithms are reported, and the effects produced by the differences of size between cations and anions, are also examined.