Osmotic pressure

Osmotic pressure is the minimum pressure which needs to be applied to a solution to prevent the inward flow of its pure solvent across a semipermeable membrane. Potential osmotic pressure is the maximum osmotic pressure that could develop in a solution if it was not separated from its pure solvent by a semipermeable membrane. It is the difference between hydrostatic pressures of the solution and the pure solvent.

Osmosis occurs when two solutions containing different concentrations of solute are separated by a selectively permeable membrane. Solvent molecules pass preferentially through the membrane from the low-concentration solution to the solution with higher solute concentration. The transfer of solvent molecules continues until osmotic equilibrium is attained.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.