Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

First-Principles Calculation of the Air-Water Second Virial Coefficient

Published

Author(s)

Allan H. Harvey, Peter H. Huang

Abstract

Recent theoretical work has produced quantitatively accurate potential-energy surfaces for water with common gases. These pair potentials have been used to calculate cross second virial coefficients with an accuracy superior to that obtained by most experiments. In this work, we combine results for water-nitrogen, water-oxygen, and water-argon to calculate an effective second virial coefficient for water with air. Our results are in agreement with the existing experimental data, but they cover a wide range of temperatures while the experimental data only extend from 253 K to 348 K. These results will be useful for humidity standards and other applications requiring thermodynamic properties of moist air.
Citation
International Journal of Thermophysics
Volume
28
Issue
2

Keywords

air, enhancement factor, humidity, second virial coefficient, water

Citation

Harvey, A. and Huang, P. (2007), First-Principles Calculation of the Air-Water Second Virial Coefficient, International Journal of Thermophysics, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=50509 (Accessed April 20, 2024)
Created April 1, 2007, Updated October 12, 2021