What happens to the fish in the water next to a nuclear power plant?

Nuclear power plant. From EaglesFanInTampa/Wikipedia.

Nuclear power plants require large amounts of water to generate steam for the turbines and to cool the equipment. They will usually be situated near bodies of water to use that water as a coolant, returning the warmer water back to the lake or river. This increases the overall temperature of the water, which lowers the quantity of dissolved oxygen, affecting the survival of fish and other organisms.

How Temperature Influences Solubility

The solubility of a substance is the amount of that substance that is required to form a saturated solution in a given amount of solvent at a specified temperature. Solubility is often measured as the grams of solute per 100 g of solvent. The solubility of sodium chloride in water is 36.0 g per 100 g water at 20°C. The temperature must be specified because solubility varies with temperature. For gases, the pressure must also be specified. Solubility is specific for a particular solvent. We will consider solubility of material in water as solvent.

The solubility of the majority of solid substances increases as the temperature increases. However, the effect is difficult to predict and varies widely from one solute to another. The temperature dependence of solubility can be visualized with the help of a solubility curve , a graph of the solubility vs. temperature (see figure below ).

Figure 1. Solubility curves for several compounds. From the CK-12 Foundation – Christopher Auyeung

Notice how the temperature dependence of NaCl is fairly flat, meaning that an increase in temperature has relatively little effect on the solubility of NaCl. The curve for KNO ₃ , on the other hand, is very steep and so an increase in temperature dramatically increases the solubility of KNO ₃ .

Several substances – HCl, NH ₃ , and SO ₂ – have solubility that decreases as temperature increases. They are all gases at standard pressure. When a solvent with a gas dissolved in it is heated, the kinetic energy of both the solvent and solute increases. As the kinetic energy of the gaseous solute increases, its molecules have a greater tendency to escape the attraction of the solvent molecules and return to the gas phase. Therefore, the solubility of a gas decreases as the temperature increases.

Solubility curves can be used to determine if a given solution is saturated or unsaturated. Suppose that 80 g of KNO ₃ is added to 100 g of water at 30°C. According to the solubility curve, approximately 48 g of KNO ₃ will dissolve at 30°C. This means that the solution will be saturated since 48 g is less than 80 g. We can also determine that there will be 80 – 48 = 32 g of undissolved KNO ₃ remaining at the bottom of the container. Now suppose that this saturated solution is heated to 60°C. According to the curve, the solubility of KNO ₃ at 60°C is about 107 g. Now the solution is unsaturated since it contains only the original 80 g of dissolved solute. Now suppose the solution is cooled all the way down to 0°C. The solubility at 0°C is about 14 g, meaning that 80 – 14 = 66 g of the KNO ₃ will recrystallize.

Glossary