Heat capacities of aqueous sodium hydroxide/aluminate mixtures and prediction of the solubility constant of boehmite up to 300 °C

A modified commercial (Setaram C80) calorimeter has been used to measure the isobaric volumetric heat capacities of concentrated alkaline sodium aluminate solutions at ionic strengths from 1 to 6 mol kg−1, with up to 40 mol.% substitution of hydroxide by aluminate, at temperatures from 50 to 300 °C and a pressure of 10 MPa. Apparent molar heat capacities for the mixtures, Cpϕ, derived from these data were found to depend linearly on the aluminate substitution level, i.e., they followed Young’s rule. These quantities were used to estimate the apparent molar heat capacities of pure, hypothetical sodium aluminate solutions, Cpϕ (‘NaAl(OH)4’(aq)). Slopes of the Young’s rule plots were invariant with ionic strength at a given temperature but depended linearly on temperature. The heat capacities of ternary aqueous sodium hydroxide/aluminate mixtures could therefore be modelled using only two parameters in addition to those needed for the correlation of Cpϕ (NaOH(aq)) reported previously from these laboratories. An assessment of the standard thermodynamic quantities for boehmite, gibbsite and the aluminate ion yielded a set of recommended values that, together with the present heat capacity data, accurately predicts the solubility of gibbsite and boehmite at temperatures up to 300 °C.