In physical chemistry, Henry's law is a gas law that states that the amount of dissolved gas in a liquid is directly proportional at equilibrium to its partial pressure above the liquid. The proportionality factor is called Henry's law constant. It was formulated by the English chemist William Henry, who studied the topic in the early 19th century.
An example where Henry's law is at play is the depth-dependent dissolution of oxygen and nitrogen in the blood of underwater divers that changes during decompression, possibly causing decompression sickness if the decompression happens too quickly. An everyday example is carbonated soft drinks, which contain dissolved carbon dioxide. Before opening, the gas above the drink in its container is almost pure carbon dioxide, at a pressure higher than atmospheric pressure. After the bottle is opened, this gas escapes, thus decreasing the pressure above the liquid, resulting in degassing as the dissolved carbon dioxide is liberated from the solution.
History In his 1803 publication about the quantity of gases absorbed by water, William Henry described the results of his experiments:
Charles Coulston Gillispie states that John Dalton "supposed that the separation of gas particles one from another in the vapor phase bears the ratio of a small whole number to their interatomic distance in solution. Henry's law follows as a consequence if this ratio is a constant for each gas at a given temperature."
Applications
In production of carbonated beverages
Under high pressure, solubility of increases. On opening a container of a carbonated beverage under pressure, pressure decreases to atmospheric, so that solubility decreases and the carbon dioxide forms bubbles that are released from the liquid.
In the service of cask-conditioned beer It is often noted that beer served by gravity (that is, directly from a tap in the cask) is less heavily carbonated than the same beer served via a hand-pump (or beer-engine). This is because beer is pressurised on its way to the point of service by the action of the beer engine, causing carbon dioxide to dissolve in the beer. This then comes out of solution once the beer has left the pump, causing a higher level of perceptible 'condition' in the beer.
For climbers or people living at high altitude Concentration of in the blood and tissues is so low that they feel weak and are unable to think properly, a condition called hypoxia.
In underwater diving In underwater diving, gas is breathed at the ambient pressure which increases with depth due to the hydrostatic pressure. Solubility of gases increases with greater depth (greater pressure) according to Henry's law, so the body tissues take on more gas over time in greater depths of water. When ascending the diver is decompressed and the solubility of the gases dissolved in the tissues decreases accordingly. If the supersaturation is too great, bubbles may form and grow, and the presence of these bubbles can cause blockages in capillaries, or distortion in the more solid tissues which can cause damage known as decompression sickness. To avoid this injury the diver must ascend slowly enough that the excess dissolved gas is carried away by the blood and released into the lung gas.
Fundamental types and variants of Henry's law constants There are many ways to define the proportionality constant of Henry's law, which can be subdivided into two fundamental types: One possibility is to put the aqueous phase into the numerator and the gaseous phase into the denominator ("aq/gas"). This results in the Henry's law solubility constant . Its value increases with increased solubility. Alternatively, numerator and denominator can be switched ("gas/aq"), which results in the Henry's law volatility constant . The value of decreases with increased solubility. IUPAC describes several variants of both fundamental types. This results from the multiplicity of quantities that can be chosen to describe the composition of the two phases. Typical choices for the aqueous phase are molar concentration (), molality (), and molar mixing ratio (). For the gas phase, molar concentration () and partial pressure () are often used. It is not possible to use the gas-phase mixing ratio () because at a given gas-phase mixing ratio, the aqueous-phase concentration depends on the total pressure and thus the ratio is not a constant. To specify the exact variant of the Henry's law constant, two superscripts are used. They refer to the numerator and the denominator of the definition. For example, refers to the Henry solubility defined as .
Henry's law solubility constants Hs
Henry solubility defined via concentration (Hscp)
Atmospheric chemists often define the Henry solubility as
where is the concentration of a species in the aqueous phase, and is the partial pressure of that species in the gas phase under equilibrium conditions.
The SI unit for is mol/(m3·Pa); however, often the unit M/atm is used, since is usually expressed in M (1M = 1 mol/dm3) and in atm (1atm = 101325Pa).
The dimensionless Henry solubility Hscc
The Henry solubility can also be expressed as the dimensionless ratio between the aqueous-phase concentration of a species and its gas-phase concentration :
For an ideal gas, the conversion is
where is the gas constant, and is the temperature.
Sometimes, this dimensionless constant is called the water–air partitioning coefficient . It is closely related to the various, slightly different definitions of the Ostwald coefficient , as discussed by Battino (1984).
Henry solubility defined via aqueous-phase mixing ratio (Hsxp)
Another Henry's law solubility constant is
where is the molar mixing ratio in the aqueous phase. For a dilute aqueous solution the conversion between and is
where is the density of water, and is the molar mass of water. Thus
The SI unit for is Pa−1, although atm−1 is still frequently used.
Henry solubility defined via molality (Hsbp)
It can be advantageous to describe the aqueous phase in terms of molality instead of concentration. The molality of a solution does not change with , since it refers to the mass of the solvent. In contrast, the concentration does change with , since the density of a solution and thus its volume are temperature-dependent. Defining the aqueous-phase composition via molality has the advantage that any temperature dependence of the Henry's law constant is a true solubility phenomenon and not introduced indirectly via a density change of the solution. Using molality, the Henry solubility can be defined as
where is used as the symbol for molality (instead of ) to avoid confusion with the symbol for mass. The SI unit for is mol/(kg·Pa). There is no simple way to calculate from , since the conversion between concentration and molality involves all solutes of a solution. For a solution with a total of solutes with indices , the conversion is
where is the density of the solution, and are the molar masses. Here is identical to one of the in the denominator. If there is only one solute, the equation simplifies to
Henry's law is only valid for dilute solutions where and . In this case the conversion reduces further to
and thus
The Bunsen coefficient α
According to Sazonov and Shaw, the dimensionless Bunsen coefficient is defined as "the volume of saturating gas, V1, reduced to T° = 273.15 K, p° = 1 bar, which is absorbed by unit volume V2* of pure solvent at the temperature of measurement and partial pressure of 1 bar." If the gas is ideal, the pressure cancels out, and the conversion to is simply
with = 273.15K. Note, that according to this definition, the conversion factor is not temperature-dependent. Independent of the temperature that the Bunsen coefficient refers to, 273.15K is always used for the conversion. The Bunsen coefficient, which is named after Robert Bunsen, has been used mainly in the older literature, and IUPAC considers it to be obsolete.
The Kuenen coefficient S
According to Sazonov and Shaw, the Kuenen coefficient is defined as "the volume of saturating gas V(g), reduced to T° = 273.15 K, p° = bar, which is dissolved by unit mass of pure solvent at the temperature of measurement and partial pressure 1 bar." If the gas is ideal, the relation to is
where is the density of the solvent, and = 273.15 K. The SI unit for is m3/kg. The Kuenen coefficient, which is named after Johannes Kuenen, has been used mainly in the older literature, and IUPAC considers it to be obsolete.
Henry's law volatility constants Hv
The Henry volatility defined via concentration (H)
A common way to define a Henry volatility is dividing the partial pressure by the aqueous-phase concentration:
The SI unit for is Pa·m3/mol.
The Henry volatility defined via aqueous-phase mixing ratio (H)
Another Henry volatility is
The SI unit for is Pa. However, atm is still frequently used.
The dimensionless Henry volatility H
The Henry volatility can also be expressed as the dimensionless ratio between the gas-phase concentration of a species and its aqueous-phase concentration
In chemical engineering and environmental chemistry, this dimensionless constant is often called the air–water partitioning coefficient
Values of Henry's law constants
A large compilation of Henry's law constants has been published by Sander (2023). A few selected values are shown in the table below:
+ Henry's law constants (gases in water at 298.15K) Gas (dimensionless) O2 770 1.3 4.3 3.2 H2 1300 7.8 7.1 1.9 CO2 29 3.4 1.6 8.3 N2 1600 6.1 9.1 1.5 He 2700 3.7 1.5 9.1 Ne 2200 4.5 1.2 1.1 Ar 710 1.4 4.0 3.4 CO 1100 9.5 5.8 2.3
Temperature dependence When the temperature of a system changes, the Henry constant also changes. The temperature dependence of equilibrium constants can generally be described with the Van 't Hoff equation, which also applies to Henry's law constants:
where is the enthalpy of dissolution. Note that the letter in the symbol refers to enthalpy and is not related to the letter for Henry's law constants. This applies to the Henry's solubility ratio, ; for Henry's volatility ratio,, the sign of the right-hand side must be reversed.
Integrating the above equation and creating an expression based on at the reference temperature = 298.15 K yields:
The van 't Hoff equation in this form is only valid for a limited temperature range in which does not change much with temperature (around 20K of variations).
The following table lists some temperature dependencies: + Values of (K) O2 H2 CO2 N2 He Ne Ar CO 1700 500 2400 1300 230 490 1300 1300
Solubility of permanent gases usually decreases with increasing temperature at around room temperature. However, for aqueous solutions, the Henry's law solubility constant for many species goes through a minimum. For most permanent gases, the minimum is below 120 °C. Often, the smaller the gas molecule (and the lower the gas solubility in water), the lower the temperature of the maximum of the Henry's law constant. Thus, the maximum is at about 30 °C for helium, 92 to 93 °C for argon, nitrogen and oxygen, and 114 °C for xenon.
Effective Henry's law constants The Henry's law constants mentioned so far do not consider any chemical equilibria in the aqueous phase. This type is called the intrinsic, or physical, Henry's law constant. For example, the intrinsic Henry's law solubility constant of formaldehyde can be defined as
In aqueous solution, formaldehyde is almost completely hydrated:
H2CO + H2O <=> H2C(OH)2
The total concentration of dissolved formaldehyde is
Taking this equilibrium into account, an effective Henry's law constant can be defined as
For acids and bases, the effective Henry's law constant is not a useful quantity because it depends on the pH of the solution. In order to obtain a pH-independent constant, the product of the intrinsic Henry's law constant and the acidity constant is often used for strong acids like hydrochloric acid (HCl):