The collected experimental data reflects not only the binding thermodynamics of the interaction of interest, but any contributing competing equilibria associated to it. A post-hoc analysis can be performed to determine the buffer or solvent-independent enthalpy from the experimental thermodynamics, by simply going through the process of Hess’ law. Below example shows a simple interaction between a metal ion (M) and a ligand (L). B represents the buffer used for this interaction and  represents protons.                  
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Therefore,</blockquote>which can be further processed to calculate the enthalpy of metal-ligand interaction. Although this example is between a metal and a ligand, it is applicable to any ITC experiment, regarding binding interactions.
As a part of the analysis, a number of protons are required to calculate the solvent-independent thermodynamics. This can be easily done by plotting a graph such as shown below.
The linear equation of this plot is the rearranged version of the equation above from the post-hoc analysis in a form of y = mx + b:</blockquote>