Potassium nitrate absorbs a large amount of heat energy from the water as it dissolves. How does this explain the solubility curve you graphed for potassium nitrate?

Question

Yates

Chemistry

1 December, 13:38

Potassium nitrate absorbs a large amount of heat energy from the water as it dissolves. How does this explain the solubility curve you graphed for potassium nitrate?

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Connor Garrett · Answer 1

Solubility is physical property of a chemical substance. It is defined as the ability of a given chemical substance, called solute, to dissolve in a given solvent.

Potassium nitrate is an ionic compound, that is moderately soluble in water.

The dissolution potassium nitrate in water is an endothermic process. Thus, the solubility of potassium nitrate increases, as the temperature increases.

The solubility curve of potassium nitrate also shows that the solubility of the potassium nitrate salt increases with temperature.

Therefore, the endothermic dissolution of potassium nitrate explains the solubility curve of potassium nitrate.