Effects of conformational distributions on sigma profiles in COSMO theories

The charge density or sigma profile of a solute molecule is an essential component in COSMO (conductor-like screen model) based solvation theories, and its generation depends on the molecular conformation used. The usual procedure is to determine the conformation of an isolated molecule, and assume that this is unchanged when the molecule is placed in solution. In this paper, the conformations of 1-hexanol and 2-methoxy-ethanol in both the liquid and vapor phases obtained from Gibbs ensemble simulation and from an isolated-molecule quantum DFT optimization are used to determine the effect of realistic conformation differences on COSMO-based properties predictions. In particular, the vapor pressure at the normal boiling temperature and the binary mixture VLE (vapor-liquid equilibrium) predictions obtained using different conformations are investigated. The results show that the sigma profile for 1-hexanol varies only slightly using the different conformations, while the sigma profile of 2-methoxy-ethanol shows a significant difference between the liquid and vapor phases. Consequently, the vapor pressure predictions for 1-hexanol are similar regardless of the manner in which the conformation population was obtained, while there is a larger difference for 2-methoxy-ethanol depending on whether the liquid or vapor conformations from simulation or the DFT-optimized structure is used. These differences in predictions are seen to be largely due to differences in the ideal solvation energy term. In mixture VLE calculations involving 1-hexanol, we again see that there is little difference in the phase equilibrium predictions among the different conformations, while for the mixture with 2-methoxy-ethanol, the differences in the sigma profiles lead to a more noticeable, though not significant, difference in the phase equilibrium predictions.