DETERMINATION OF

OSMOTIC PRESSURE
 OSMOTIC PRESSURE

Osmotic pressure can be thought of as the pressure that would

be required to stop water from diffusing through a barrier by
osmosis. In other words, it refers to how hard the water would
“push” to get through the barrier in order to diffuse to the other
side.
Osmotic pressure is determined by solute concentration–
water will “try harder” to diffuse into an area with a high
concentration of a solute, such as a salt, than into an area with
a low concentration.
In reality of course, osmotic pressure is not a “desire” of water to
move, but rather an extension of the natural law that all matter will
become randomly distributed over time. When the concentrations of
substances are different in two areas and the areas have contact with
each other, the random motion of particles will cause the substances
to diffuse until the solution is uniform throughout the whole area.
 Osmosis is the particular diffusion of water through a semi-
permeable membrane. So in the case of osmosis, the solutes
cannot move because they cannot pass through the membrane.
However, the water can move, and it does – passing through
the membrane to an area with higher solute concentration.
This can cause the total volume of water on each side of the
membrane to change: the side of the membrane with more
solutes may end up with much more water. This can lead to
problems for cells, such as bursting (if too much water moves
into the cell), or becoming dehydrate (if too much water moves
out).
 Some organisms, such as plants that use osmotic pressure
to move water, have taken advantage of this principle. But it
can also threaten the health of cells and organisms when there
is too much or too little water in the extracellular environment
compared to the inside of the cell.
Osmotic pressure can be calculated using the following
equation:
π = MRT

where:
π = the symbol used to denote osmotic pressure (does not
equal 3.14)
M = molar concentration of the solute
R = R is the ideal gas constant
T = T is the temperature in degrees Kelvin
Many chemical and biological processes depend on osmosis,
the selective passage of solvent molecules through a porous
membrane from a dilute solution to a more concentrated one.
Figure 12.11 illustrates this phenomenon. The left
compartment of the apparatus contains pure solvent; the right
compartment contains a solution.
The two compartments are separated by a semipermeable
membrane, which allows the passage of solvent molecules but
blocks the passage of solute molecules. At the start, the water
levels in the two tubes are equal. After some time, the level in
the right tube begins to rise and continues to go up until
equilibrium is reached, that is, until no further change can be
observed. The osmotic pressure (p) of a solution is the pressure
required to stop osmosis.
What causes water to move spontaneously from left to right in
this case? The situation depicted in Figure 12.12 helps us
understand the driving force behind osmosis. Because the vapor
pressure of pure water is higher than the vapor pressure of the
solution, there is a net transfer of water from the left beaker to
the right one. Given enough time, the transfer will continue
until no more water remains in the left beaker. A similar driving
force causes water to move from the pure solvent into the
solution during osmosis.
Osmotic pressure is directly proportional to the concentration of
solution. This is what we would expect, because all colligative
properties depend only on the number of solute particles in
solution. If two solutions are of equal concentration and, hence,
have the same osmotic pressure, they are said to be isotonic. If
two solutions are of unequal osmotic pressures, the more
concentrated solution is said to be hypertonic and the more
dilute solution is described as hypotonic.
Although osmosis is a common and well-studied phenomenon,
relatively little is known about how the semipermeable
membrane stops some molecules yet allows others to pass. In
some cases, it is simply a matter of size. A semipermeable
membrane may have pores small enough to let only the solvent
molecules through. In other cases, a different mechanism may
be responsible for the membrane’s selectivity—for example, the
solvent’s greater “solubility” in the membrane.
The osmotic pressure phenomenon manifests itself in many
interesting applications. To study the contents of red blood
cells, which are protected from the external environment by a
semipermeable membrane, biochemists use a technique called
hemolysis. The red blood cells are placed in a hypotonic
solution. Because the hypotonic solution is less concentrated
than the interior of the cell, water moves into the cells. The
cells swell and eventually burst, releasing hemoglobin and
other molecules.
The left side of this apparatus contains a
solution containing a solute (component 2)
dissolved in a solvent (component 1), and
the right side contains pure solvent. The
pressure of the solution is increased above
that of the pure solvent by the gravitational
(hydrostatic) force on the solution in the
left column.
We denote the pressure on the pure solvent by P, and the
pressure on the solution by P + π. The difference π is called the
osmotic pressure. At equilibrium, the value of the chemical
potential of the solvent must be the same on both sides of the
membrane. If the solvent obeys Raoult’s law.

We must abandon our previous approximation that the chemical

potential is independent of the pressure. From Eq. (5.4-10), if
the molar volume of the pure liquid is nearly independent of
pressure (a good approximation),

which gives
For a dilute solution of two components

and we can write

Use of these two equations gives

where c2 is the molar concentration of the solute. Equation

(6.7-23) is one of two equations known as the van’t Hoff
equation. It is remarkably similar to the ideal gas equation of
state.
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