Direct Coexistence Methods to Determine the Solubility of Salts in Water from Numerical Simulations. Test Case NaCl

Héctor M. Manzanilla-Granados, Humberto Saint-Martín, Raúl Fuentes-Azcatl, José Alejandre

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

44 Scopus citations

Abstract

The solubility of NaCl, an equilibrium between a saturated solution of ions and a solid with a crystalline structure, was obtained from molecular dynamics simulations using the SPC/E and TIP4P-Ew water models. Four initial setups on supersaturated systems were tested on sodium chloride (NaCl) solutions to determine the equilibrium conditions and computational performance: (1) an ionic solution confined between two crystal plates of periodic NaCl, (2) a solution with all the ions initially distributed randomly, (3) a nanocrystal immersed in pure water, and (4) a nanocrystal immersed in an ionic solution. In some cases, the equilibration of the system can take several microseconds. The results from this work showed that the solubility of NaCl was the same, within simulation error, for the four setups, and in agreement with previously reported values from simulations with the setup (1). The system of a nanocrystal immersed in supersaturated solution was found to equilibrate faster than others. In agreement with laser-Doppler droplet measurements, at equilibrium with the solution the crystals in all the setups had a slight positive charge.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)8389-8396
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of Physical Chemistry B
Volume119
Issue number26
DOIs
StatePublished - 2 Jul 2015

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