Determination of Latent Heats of Vaporization and Fusion

Water is the most abundant liquid on the surface of the earth. It is a liquid whose properties are quite surprising, both as a pure liquid and as a solvent. Water is a very cohesive liquid: its melting and vaporization temperatures are very high for a liquid that is neither ionic nor metallic, and whose molar mass is low. Thus, water remains liquid at atmospheric pressure up to 100˚C while similar molecules such as H2S, H2Se, H2Te for example would give a vaporization temperature close to −80˚C. This cohesion is in fact ensured by hydrogen bonds between water molecules. This type of bonds between neighboring molecules, hydrogen bonds, is quite often found in chemistry [1] [2]. Any change in the state of aggregation of a substance occurs with the absorption or release of a certain amount of latent heat of transformation. Latent heat of fusion, vaporization or sublimation is the ratio of the energy supplied as heat to the mass of the substance that is melted, vaporized or sublimated. As a result of the reversibility of the processes, the fusion heat is equal to the heat released in the reverse process: crystallization and solidification heat. And likewise the heat of vaporization is equal to the heat of condensation. This equality of heat is often used to determine experimentally either of these quantities. There are two main measurement methods: 1) Direct measurement using the calorimeter, 2) Indirect measure based on the use of the Vant’Hoff relationship. The objective of this work is to measure the latent heat of water vaporization and verify the compatibility of the experimental values with the values given by the tables using the indirect method.