Simulation of Osmotic Pressure in Concentrated Aqueous Salt Solutions

Accurate force fields are critical for meaningful simulation studies, of highly concentrated electrolytes. The ion models that are widely used in biomolecular simulation's do not necessarily reproduce the correct behavior, at finite concentrations. In principle, the osmotic pressure is a key thermodynamic property that could be used to test and refine force field parameters for concentrated solutions. Here we describe a novel, simple, and practical method to compute the osmotic pressure directly from molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of concentrated' aqueous solutions by introducing an idealized semipermeable membrane. Simple models for Na+, K+, and Cl- are tested and calibrated to accurately reproduce the experimental osmotic pressure at high salt concentration, up to the solubility limit of 4-5 M. The methodology is general and can be extended to any type of solute as well as nonadditive polarizable force fields.