I'd like to emphasize the
diverse ion effect, well known to chemists performing gravimetric analyses.
This effect is, in fact, a reduction in ion concentration (ie, reduced activity) due to the presence of other ions that shield the dissociated species of interest, in this case: SO
42-, Ca
2+.
The published values of standard solubility products K
spo hold for "pure" water, not for the solubility product in the presence of other ions.
The standard value is divided by the product of the activities (generally -but not necessarily- lower than one) to obtain an increased K
sp.
See
htp://
Lately I found a "new" value for K
spo for calcium sulfate at 25
oC of 1.9 [×] 10
-4. This value should be divided by the product of the activity coefficients a
Ca++ and a
SO4= to obtain the correct K
sp.
As an example, the solubility of barium sulfate is almost tripled in the presence of 0.1 M NaNO
3. It appears that the increase in solubility is greater with precipitates containing multiply charged ions.