Question #e9418
1 Answer
Nobody answered this question yet, because it is questioning about an uncommon topic. Nevertheless, it is an interesting point.
Being a kinetic issue, the rate or "readiness" of solubility is completely unrelated with the thermodynamic question of the amount or concentration of solute at equilibrium.
The rate of solubility should be defined as the number of moles of solute that are dissolved in each time unit in a stream of pure solvent (far from equilibrium).
This kind of rate would depend from the way of mixing, the flow of solvent stream, the temperature, the specific area (cm²/mol) of contact surface. Given all thesse parameters, that are not easy to reproduce at the same extent for different substances (particularly for different states: liquid, solid or gases), I think that the rate of solubility would depend from specific characteristics of the intermolecular bonds and dimensions of the solute and solvent molecules, and from the kind of interactions between these molecules.
