Henry’s law is one of the gas laws formulated by William Henry in 1803 and states: “At a constant temperature, the amount of a given gas that dissolves in a given type and volume of liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in equilibrium with that liquid.” An equivalent way of stating the law is that the solubility of a gas in a liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of the gas above the liquid:
where
- CC is the solubility of a gas at a fixed temperature in a particular solvent (in units of M or mL gas/L)
- kk is Henry’s law constant (often in units of M/atm)
- PgasPgas is the partial pressure of the gas (often in units of atm)
