Molality

Molality, also called molal concentration, is a measure of the concentration of a solute in a solution in terms of amount of substance in a specified amount of mass of the solvent. This contrasts with the definition of molarity which is based on a specified volume of solution.

A commonly used unit for molality in chemistry is mol/kg. A solution of concentration 1 mol/kg is also sometimes denoted as 1 molal.

Definition

The molality (b), of a solution is defined as the amount of substance (in mol) of solute, , divided by the mass (in kg) of the solvent, :

Origin

The term molality is formed in analogy to molarity which is the molar concentration of a solution. The earliest of the intensive property molality and of its adjectival unit, the now-deprecated molal, appears to have been published by G. N. Lewis and M. Randall in the 1923 publication of Thermodynamics and the Free Energies of Chemical Substances. Though the two terms are subject to being confused with one another, the molality and molarity of a weak aqueous solution are nearly the same, as one kilogram of water (solvent) occupies the volume of 1 liter at room temperature and a small amount of solute has little effect on the volume.