Thermodynamics of alcohols and monosaccharides in aqueous solutions of biuret at 25°C.

The excess enthalpies of ternary aqueous solutions of biuret with four aliphatic alcohols or four isomeric pentoses have been determined by flow microcalorimetry at 25°C. The coefficients of the virial expansion of the excess enthalpies have been evaluated and compared with those already reported for urea and thiourea with the same alcohols and pentoses used here. For biuret-alcohol systems, the cross coefficients are positive and depend on the length and branching of the alkyl chain of the alcohols. On the contrary, they are negative for biuret-pentose systems. Hence, biuret, as urea and thioura, is able to differentiate the behavior of families of solutes characterized by the same functional groups. The results are interpreted in terms of the relative stabilities of the hydration cospheres of predominantly hydrophobic or predominantly hydrophilic cosolutes. However, hypotheses about the hydration cospheres of the saccharides, which are more complex than those used previously, seem to be necessary to rationalize their complete behavior in water.