High pressure and anesthesia: compressibility, molal volume, and partial molal volume of volatile anesthetics.

This study was undertaken to provide volume data of volatile anesthetics under high pressure. Molal volumes of liquid halothane, enflurane, and isoflurane and their partial molal volumes in water and in 1-octanol were determined by high-precision solution densitometry at 25.000 +/- 0.0005 degrees C over the pressure range from ambient to 34.56 MPa (341 atm). The isothermal compressibilities of the pure anesthetics and their isothermal partial molal compressibilities at their infinite dilution in water and in 1-octanol have also been calculated at 0.1013 MPa (1 atm).