Relationship between pressure and temperature for liquids

  • #1
sss1
50
2
Homework Statement
Is there a relationship between pressure and temperature for liquids? I know for most gassed they obey the ideal gas law, PV=nRT, which means that pressure is directly proportional to temperature. Is there also such a proportionality for liquids ( I know the gas law doesn’t apply for liquids but is there some other relationship?). And with some googling I saw the experiment where you place some liquid into a bell jar and remove the air and some time after the liquid starts to boil. Is that because the temperature of the liquid was increased or it just became easier for the surface liquid to escape because now there’s less force pushing down on it and temperature hasn’t actually changed?
Relevant Equations
NA
^^
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #2
sss1 said:
Homework Statement: Is there a relationship between pressure and temperature for liquids? I know for most gassed they obey the ideal gas law, PV=nRT, which means that pressure is directly proportional to temperature.
at constant volume and number of particles (or density)! You have to remember that you are looking a the relation between more than two quantities.

sss1 said:
Is there also such a proportionality for liquids ( I know the gas law doesn’t apply for liquids but is there some other relationship?).

The ideal gas law works well because the interaction between gas particles is most often negligible, so all gases behave the same. Interactions are very important in liquids, so there is no such simple, universal law.

sss1 said:
And with some googling I saw the experiment where you place some liquid into a bell jar and remove the air and some time after the liquid starts to boil. Is that because the temperature of the liquid was increased or it just became easier for the surface liquid to escape because now there’s less force pushing down on it and temperature hasn’t actually changed?
The lower the atmospheric pressure, the lower the temperature at which a liquid will boil. Your explanation as to why that is basically correct. See
https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshe...er/States_of_Matter/Phase_Transitions/Boiling
 
  • Like
Likes Lnewqban
  • #3
DrClaude said:
at constant volume and number of particles (or density)! You have to remember that you are looking a the relation between more than two quantities.
Yes, that's true, I wasn't being specific enough.
DrClaude said:
The ideal gas law works well because the interaction between gas particles is most often negligible, so all gases behave the same. Interactions are very important in liquids, so there is no such simple, universal law.
That makes sense!
DrClaude said:
Your explanation as to why that is basically correct.
Explanation as in it just became easier for the surface liquid to escape because now there’s less force pushing down on it and temperature hasn’t actually changed?
 
  • #4
For a single phase liquid, $$\frac{1}{\rho}d\rho=-\alpha dT+\frac{dP}{B}$$ahere ##\rho## is the density, ##\alpha## ia the volumetric coefficient of thermal expansion, T is the temperature, P is the pressure, and B is the bulk modulus.
 
  • #5
sss1 said:
Explanation as in it just became easier for the surface liquid to escape because now there’s less force pushing down on it and temperature hasn’t actually changed?
"Boiling" is not so much about surface liquid escaping as it is about the behavior underneath the surface.

If you remove enough pressure, liquid beneath the surface can evaporate into newly formed bubbles. Instead of evaporation taking place only at the surface, you have the potential for "evaporation" everywhere.
Similar to a shaken bottle of soda when the pressure is released.

What I would expect for a beaker of water in a bell jar that is being evacuated would be for the surface water to begin evaporating first. Since the partial pressure of water vapor in the chamber is less than the vapor pressure of the water in the beaker, evaporation will take place.

One effect of the evaporation would be to cool the surface of the water.

As the total pressure [not just water vapor pressure] in the bell jar decreases below the vapor pressure of the submerged water, boiling becomes possible beneath the surface. This would take place in preference to plain old evaporation at the surface because the surface had been chilled by the prior evaporation.

If the beaker is well insulated, the result should be boiling water with bits of ice floating in it and then just the remaining ice sublimating into the vacuum.
 
  • #6
jbriggs444 said:
As the total pressure [not just water vapor pressure] in the bell jar decreases below the vapor pressure of the submerged water, boiling becomes possible beneath the surface. This would take place in preference to plain old evaporation at the surface because the surface had been chilled by the prior evaporation.
That's interesting, I've never heard of the term vapour pressure before.
How does that come into play here?
When you remove air inside the bell jar, it becomes easier for the water molecules to evaporate? And thus more vapour pressure? With some googling I found that liquid starts to boil when the vapour pressure is equal to the atmospheric pressure? Why is that?
 
  • #7
sss1 said:
That's interesting, I've never heard of the term vapour pressure before.
How does that come into play here?
When you remove air inside the bell jar, it becomes easier for the water molecules to evaporate? And thus more vapour pressure? With some googling I found that liquid starts to boil when the vapour pressure is equal to the atmospheric pressure? Why is that?
The pressure of a gas mixture is the sum of the pressures ("partial pressures ") of the constituents. Each constituent behaves pretty much as though the others are not there.
For water vapour, its partial pressure is often called its vapour pressure. It is limited by the temperature. The higher the temperature the higher the vapour pressure can go (up to saturation vapour pressure, SVP).
As long as the VP is below the SVP, evaporation will take place from the surface, but its rate is limited by the exposure area. As @jbriggs444 notes, the molecules which evaporate are the most energetic, so their evaporation lowers the temperature at the surface. A flow of energy from further down (mostly convection) maintains it.

Boiling point is when SVP equals ambient total pressure. As @jbriggs444 wrote, at this point bubbles can form within the water. That greatly increases surface area and evaporation proceeds much faster, so long as more heat is supplied to maintain the temperature.

This LibreText description is misleading. It fails to distinguish between boiling and evaporation. Defining boiling as what happens at boiling point is particularly unenlightening. Couldn't find a way to give feedback.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Likes jbriggs444
  • #8
Cool, but when the beaker of water is placed into the bell jar and air is being removed, the water begins to boil very quickly, which means that the bell jar speeds up the evaporation rate so that the VP reaches SVP? is that because now due to reduced air pressure, the temperature of water is essentially increased? This sounds counterintuitive but I googled the definition of temperature and it said the average kinetic energy, which I guess makes sense because with reduced suppression from air pressure then the molecules can move faster and as a result more evaporation occurs?
 
  • #9
sss1 said:
Cool, but when the beaker of water is placed into the bell jar and air is being removed, the water begins to boil very quickly, which means that the bell jar speeds up the evaporation rate so that the VP reaches SVP?
It is difficult to follow what you are saying here.

If the vapor pressure reaches the saturated vapor pressure then evaporation stops. An equilibrium is reached where vapor molecules are condensing into the liquid at the same rate that liquid molecules are evaporating into the surrounding volume.

The vacuum pump attached to the bell jar continuously removes air and vapor so that saturated vapor pressure is not reached. The fact that boiling is occurring is evidence that total pressure must be less than the saturated vapor pressure (for the liquid at its current temperature).

sss1 said:
is that because now due to reduced air pressure, the temperature of water is essentially increased?
No. The temperature does not increase. It decreases.

It takes energy to free a water molecule from the liquid water so that it escapes into the surrounding volume. This energy is supplied by the water molecule's kinetic energy. If it has enough energy and it located at the surface of the water, is escapes and has its energy reduced because of the escape. This energy loss is the "latent heat of vaporization".

The liquid water has lost a high energy molecule. So its average kinetic energy decreases.

The surrounding volume has picked up a molecule with reduced energy. So its average kinetic energy usually decreases as well.

sss1 said:
This sounds counterintuitive but I googled the definition of temperature and it said the average kinetic energy, which I guess makes sense because with reduced suppression from air pressure then the molecules can move faster and as a result more evaporation occurs?
No. The reduced pressure does essentially nothing to alter the energy of the water molecules.

The increased evaporation is, as @haruspex points out, due to the dramatically increased surface area made available due to spontaneously forming bubbles beneath the surface.

Bubble formation is made possible since air pressure (and, hence, water pressure) is not pushing back on tiny bubbles to prevent them from expanding.
 
Last edited:
  • #10
jbriggs444 said:
Bubble formation is made possible since air pressure (and, hence, water pressure) is not pushing back on tiny bubbles to prevent them from expanding.
Small clarification…
air pressure (and, hence, water pressure) is not pushing back sufficiently on tiny bubbles to prevent them from expanding.
 
  • Like
Likes jbriggs444
  • #11
sss1 said:
Homework Statement: Is there a relationship between pressure and temperature for liquids?
Inducing boiling by gradually reducing the pressure of any gas on top of a liquid is difficult.
More and more vapor jumps out to work against any vacuum that a machine could create.

Boiling can appear and disappear almost instantaneously for cases in which the liquid is in direct contact with a solid that suddenly creates very low pressure within the mass of liquid by moving away from the (non-compressible/extensible) interphase.

Please, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_diagram#3-dimensional_diagrams

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavitation

:cool:
 
  • #12
jbriggs444 said:
It is difficult to follow what you are saying here.

If the vapor pressure reaches the saturated vapor pressure then evaporation stops. An equilibrium is reached where vapor molecules are condensing into the liquid at the same rate that liquid molecules are evaporating into the surrounding volume.

The vacuum pump attached to the bell jar continuously removes air and vapor so that saturated vapor pressure is not reached. The fact that boiling is occurring is evidence that total pressure must be less than the saturated vapor pressure (for the liquid at its current temperature).No. The temperature does not increase. It decreases.

It takes energy to free a water molecule from the liquid water so that it escapes into the surrounding volume. This energy is supplied by the water molecule's kinetic energy. If it has enough energy and it located at the surface of the water, is escapes and has its energy reduced because of the escape. This energy loss is the "latent heat of vaporization".

The liquid water has lost a high energy molecule. So its average kinetic energy decreases.

The surrounding volume has picked up a molecule with reduced energy. So its average kinetic energy usually decreases as well.No. The reduced pressure does essentially nothing to alter the energy of the water molecules.

The increased evaporation is, as @haruspex points out, due to the dramatically increased surface area made available due to spontaneously forming bubbles beneath the surface.

Bubble formation is made possible since air pressure (and, hence, water pressure) is not pushing back on tiny bubbles to prevent them from expanding.
Alright, so evaporation occurs at surface where particular water molecules at the surface has enough energy to escape, lowers the temperature of the water. Air and vapour is removed by the bell jar so SVP( a point where the rate of evaporation and condensation is equal) is never reached. Which makes bubble formation possible since now the air pressure is not enough to stop them from forming. And so evaporation rate is increased.
Then since SVP is never reached, does that mean the water in the breaker is not boiling?
 
  • #13
sss1 said:
Then since SVP is never reached, does that mean the water in the breaker is not boiling?
Boiling occurs when the saturated vapor pressure that the liquid would have exceeds the total pressure that the surrounding volume does have.

The water in beaker is boiling.

Consider the situation at the wall of a small, stable vapor bubble in the water exactly at the boiling point:

The bubble is filled with nothing but vapor. That vapor is at the saturated vapor pressure for the fluid at the current temperature. Because the bubble contains nothing but vapor, this is also the total pressure within the bubble. The surrounding fluid is also under this same pressure. The bubble is in equilibrium between the water encroaching and shrinking it or the gas expanding and growing it. So the bubble neither grows nor shrinks.

Because the vapor in the bubble is exactly at SVP, the rate of evaporation and of condensation are equal. The bubble content is in equilibrium. There is no net evaporation into the bubble or condensation from the bubble. So the content of the bubble does not change over time.

If the ambient pressure is reduced below this equilibrium point ("the boiling point"), then the equilibrium will be broken. The bubble (at SVP) will expand within the liquid (now below SVP). This will result in a reduced pressure within the bubble. The rate of evaporation will then exceed the rate of condensation. There will be a net flow of vapor into the bubble. This process will continus with the bubble expanding and filling with newly evaporated vapor.

Convection will cause the bubble to float to the surface and pop while new bubbles are forming below. This is the familiar "rolling boil" that one sees in a pot on the stove.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Likes Lnewqban

FAQ: Relationship between pressure and temperature for liquids

What is the relationship between pressure and temperature for liquids?

The relationship between pressure and temperature for liquids is described by the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, which shows how the vapor pressure of a liquid changes with temperature. As temperature increases, the kinetic energy of the molecules increases, leading to a higher vapor pressure. This means that at higher temperatures, liquids tend to have higher vapor pressures.

How does increasing pressure affect the boiling point of a liquid?

Increasing the pressure on a liquid typically raises its boiling point. This is because a higher pressure requires the liquid to reach a higher temperature before its vapor pressure equals the surrounding pressure, which is the condition necessary for boiling to occur.

Why do liquids boil at lower temperatures at higher altitudes?

Liquids boil at lower temperatures at higher altitudes because the atmospheric pressure is lower. Since boiling occurs when a liquid's vapor pressure equals the surrounding pressure, lower atmospheric pressure at higher altitudes means that the liquid can reach this point at a lower temperature.

What is the impact of pressure on the freezing point of a liquid?

The impact of pressure on the freezing point of a liquid can vary depending on the substance. For most liquids, increasing pressure will lower the freezing point. However, for water, increasing pressure actually raises the freezing point due to its unique molecular structure and the formation of ice.

How can the relationship between pressure and temperature be utilized in industrial applications?

The relationship between pressure and temperature is crucial in many industrial applications, such as in refrigeration and pressure cooking. In refrigeration, manipulating pressure allows for the control of temperature in cooling systems. In pressure cooking, increasing pressure inside the cooker raises the boiling point of water, allowing food to cook faster at higher temperatures.

Similar threads

Replies
17
Views
2K
Replies
2
Views
437
Replies
2
Views
4K
Replies
12
Views
1K
Replies
8
Views
1K
Replies
6
Views
3K
Replies
1
Views
545
Back
Top