Papers

So over the past year or so I've had some papers published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B, on the solvation properties of ions. I thought I would explain in simple language what I've done and why I think it's important.

They can be found at here, here and here. I might discuss each paper in its own post but first I thought I'd just explain some background concepts.

The basic idea is that when you dissolve salt in water there is some energy change, normally the ions like to go into water and so energy is released partly in the form of heat. It's just like how a ball will naturally roll down a hill and release some energy in the form of motion, which then turns into heat.

Roughly speaking this is why it takes so much energy to desalinate water, it costs energy to take ions out of pure water as they like to be there.

In technical terms we say that the salt dissolving has a negative free energy change. Because energy is conserved there must be a positive energy increase somewhere else which is why we get our heat released. There have even been attempts to harness this energy, where fresh water rivers mix with the very salty sea.

The calculation of free energies is a centrally important problem in Physical Chemistry. It is normally referred to with the letter G.  Ashutosh Jogalekar at Curious Wavefunction does a great job of explaining in a more general context what is is and why it's important.

Here's a nice video of the process of water dissolving salt. The energy change between the start and end of that process is what I'm trying to calculate.