Salting out of methane by sodium chloride: a scaled particle theory study

The salting out of methane by adding NaCl to water at 25 °C and 1 atm is investigated by calculating the work of cavity creation by means of scaled particle theory and the methane-solvent energy of attraction. The latter quantity changes to a little extent on passing from pure water to an aqueous 4 M NaCl solution, whereas the magnitude of the work of cavity creation increases significantly, accounting for the salting out effect. There is quantitative agreement between the experimental values of the hydration Gibbs energy and the calculated ones. The behavior of the work of cavity creation is due to the increase in the volume packing density of NaCl solutions, since the average effective molecular diameter does not change, being always 2.80 Å. The same approach allows the rationalization of the difference in methane salting out along the alkali chloride series. These results indicate that, fixed the aqueous solution density, the solubility of nonpolar species is mainly determined by the effective diameter of solvent molecules and the corresponding volume packing density. There is no need to take into account the H-bond rearrangement because it is characterized by an almost complete enthalpy-entropy compensation.