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Mon 4 Oct, 2004 06:52 am
Hi..
If I added sugar ( non-volatile and non-electrolyte ) to water , this will result in a depression in the freezing point to the solvent in the solution ( less than 0 C to water ).For the boiling point , it would raise or elevate it.
My question is , what will happen if I added something volatile and electrolyte to water ?, like ethanol for instance.
Roughly the same thing.
Although a more volatile material will tend to depress the boiling point to nearer that of the more volatile solute. There's some pretty slick thermodynamics with mixtures, depending upon weather there are surface effects and/or molecular orbital interactions.
Ethanol and water mixtures may not be the best case for ideal modeling since both materials at times behave like polar and nonpolar materials (ethanol particularly). With ethanol and water, there is a definite hydrogen bonding effect because of the -OH groups on the ethanol (CH3CH2OH) and the water (HOH). This is the effect of molecular orbital interactions and the affinity to fill them. Ethanol and water forms a low boiling azetrope--as a result binary distillation cannot produce pure ethanol.
As an introduction to the thermodynamics of solubility start by looking at what are known as "Ideal Solutions."
Also consider how freezing point depression can be used to determine molecular weight?-and how it will only return an average.
Rap
It may be incorrect to say fuming sulphuric acid is more volatile than water, but mixing the two raises the boiling point of both well above 212 f = 100 c, so there may be important exceptions. Neil