WHY GASES DISSOLVE IN LIQUIDS

The thermodynamics and statistical mechanics of solubility are fairly well understood. It is still very difficult, however, to make quantitative predictions of solubility for real systems from first principles. The purposes of this article are to present the results of solubility experiments in some prototype solute-solvent systems, to show how far they may be understood from molecular first principles, and to discuss some of the things that are still missing. The main systems used as examples have the inert gas xenon as solute and some simple organic liquids as solvents.