CVEN 3454/5404 Water Chemistry


Problem Set 1  Activity and Concentration

1.  Problem 1-3, Benjamin (2002) ("1-3" refers to Problem 3 in Chapter 1).  Calcium sulfate equilibrium.  For part (d), use either of the following criteria for convergence: (1) iterate until the new concentrations are within 1% of the concentrations of the previous iteration, or (2) perform a maximum of five iterations.

2.  Problem 1-7, Benjamin (2002).  Correcting equilibrium constants for seawater.

3.  At the Iron Mountain mine in California, Nordstrom et al. (2000; Negative pH and extremely acidic mine waters from Iron Mountain, California, Environmental Science &Technology 34, 254-258) measured negative pH values -- as low as a pH of -3.6.
   (a) Estimate the concentration of protons ([H+]) for sample with a pH of -2.5 (designated 90WA110A in Table 2).
   (b) Calculate the activity coefficient for a proton (
gH+) for the sample with the pH of -2.5.
   (c) Explain briefly the source of the acidity at Iron Mountain.


Last updated on September 07, 2007 at 10:20 PM by Joe Ryan