Enhanced oxygen solubility in metastable water under tension
Abstract
Despite its relevance in numerous natural and industrial processes, the solubility of molecular oxygen has never been directly measured in capillary condensed liquid water. In this article, we measure oxygen solubility in liquid water trapped within nanoporous samples, in metastable equilibrium with a subsaturated vapor. We show that solubility increases two-fold at moderate subsaturations (RH ~ 0.55). This evolution with relative humidity is in good agreement with a simple thermodynamic prediction using properties of bulk water, previously verified experimentally at positive pressure. Our measurement thus verifies the validity of this macroscopic thermodynamic theory to strong confinement and large negative pressures, where ignificant non-idealities are expected. This effect has strong implications for important oxygen-dependent chemistries in natural and technological contexts.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1809.06605,
title = {Enhanced oxygen solubility in metastable water under tension},
author = {Pierre Lidon and Sierra C. Marker and Justin J. Wilson and Rebecca M. Williams and Warren R. Zipfel and Abraham D. Stroock},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.06605},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in Langmuir