Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressure Applied to Air

The Dalton’s law of partial pressure is the universal law applicable to the mixture of all types of gases that do not react chemically with each other but exist physically distinct. The Dalton’s law of partial pressure says that: 1) Two or more gases can exist in a closed space at the same time and form the mixture without reacting with each other. In a mechanical mixture of the gases that don’t react chemically, each gas or vapor exerts its partial pressure which is exactly same as that it would have applied if the gas was separated from the mixture and occupied the space alone. 2) The total pressure applied by the whole mixture of gases is the sum of the partial pressures exerted by the all individual gases or vapors.

Let us consider an example. If there is mixture of five gases, A, B, C, D, and E, each gas will exert its partial pressure say: P_A, P_B, P_C, P_D and P_E which is same even if they would have occupied the space separately. The total pressure P exerted by the mixture of gases is:

P = P_A+ P_B + P_C + P_D + P_E

We have seen that air is the mixture of various gases like nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor and other gases that don’t react chemically, but exists physically distinct, hence Dalton’s law of partial pressure is applicable to it. If we consider the air made up of dry air (without considering individual constituents of air) and water vapor, the total atmospheric pressure or the barometric pressure exerted by the air is sum of the partial pressure of the dry air and partial pressure of the water vapor.

Let us suppose that the total barometric pressure exerted by air is P, and the partial pressures exerted by the dry air and water vapor are P_d and P_v respectively, then:

P = P_d + P_v

Since the percentage of dry air is higher in this mixture, it is quite obvious that the partial pressure exerted by the dry air is much higher than that exerted by the water vapor. However, during the cooling or heating of the air, the dry air does not undergoes any change in phase, but the water vapor condenses on cooling and gets superheated on heating. The major changes that occur in the air during air conditioning process of heating or cooling the air occurs within the water vapor. Hence, though the quantity of water vapor in the air is very small (much lesser than 1%) compared to the others gases, it plays the major role in the psychrometric properties of the air. In fact most of the psychrometric studies are revolved around the water vapor present in air.