Aqueous solubilities and octanol-water partition coefficients of binary liquid mixtures of organic compounds at 25°C

From thermodynamics and certain assumptions it is shown that, under the usual experimental conditions, the octanol-water partition coefficient (K_o/w) of a given organic liquid should be the same whether the substance is partitioned neat or as part of a mixture. Measurements of several mixtures of n-propylbenzene (log K_o/w=3.71±0.04)+ethylbenzene (log K_o/w=3.16±0.01) clearly confirm this. It is also shown that the aqueous solubility (S_w) of a neat organic liquid can be related to its aqueous solubility (S_w), when it is present at volume fraction in an organic liquid mixture, by S_w=S_w, where is its activity coefficient in the organic mixture. The measured S_w values for n-propylbenzene + ethylbenzene (1), n-hexane + nitrobenzene (>1) and di-isopropyl ether + chloroform (<1) are found to be in good agreement with the predicted values (average differences of, respectively, <2%, 8% and 6%). In general, the bounds on S_w are expected to be 0ww.