Quantifying the effects of dissolved nitrogen and carbon dioxide on drying pressure of hydrophobic nanopores

Abstract

The effects of a dissolved gas on the behavior of liquid in cylindrical nanopores are investigated in the framework of Gibbsian composite system thermodynamics and classical nucleation theory. An equation is derived relating the phase equilibrium of a mixture of a subcritical solvent and a supercritical gas to the curvature of the liquid–vapor interface. Both the liquid and the vapor phases are treated nonideally, which is shown to be important for the accuracy of the predictions in the case of water with dissolved nitrogen or carbon dioxide. The behavior of water in nanoconfinement is found to be only affected when the gas amount is significantly more than the saturation concentration of these gases at atmospheric conditions. However, such concentrations can be easily reached at high pressures during intrusion if there is sufficient gas present in the system, especially considering gas oversolubility in confinement. By including an adjustable line tension term in the free energy equation (−44 pJ/m for all points), the theory can make predictions in line with the few data points available from recent experimental work. However, we note that such a fitted value empirically accounts for multiple effects and should not be interpreted as the energy of the three-phase contact line. Compared to molecular dynamics simulations, our method is easy to implement, requires minimal computational resources, and is not limited to small pore sizes and/or short simulation times. It provides an efficient path for first-order estimation of the metastability limit of water–gas solutions in nanopores.