Acid-Base Chemistry Lab Report

Acid-base chemistry can be used to separate the components of a mixture, if one or more of those components are acidic or basic, based on the solubility of that mixture. Solubility is the ability of a solute to dissolve in a solvent and it’ll usually form a solution. An extraction is when compounds are dissolved from a solid into a solvent or from a solution into another solvent. Solvent-solvent is when nonaqueous solvents and reagents are used to remove an element from an aqueous solution. The purpose of this experiment is to determine the composition of mixtures, identify an unknown mixture and calculate the percent recovery. The formula for percent recovery is
Discussion
For experiment A, the weight of the empty vials were 9.911 grams and 9.896 grams. The weight of the vials with the naphthalene was 9.948 grams and 9.895 grams. The percent recoveries will be 49.3% and 34.6%. The organic layer contains the neutral naphthalene and the upper aqueous layer contains 4-Nitroaniline. According to Regis, the reason why there were two layers is because the two compounds in the solution were immiscible. This means that they don’t dissolve each other. Therefore the aqueous solvent will sit on top and the solvent that is immiscible with water, the organic solvent, will sit on the bottom. The reason why the percent recovery wasn’t higher was because maybe not all of the upper aqueous layer or all of the organic layer was extracted all the way. If some of the upper layer was mixed …show more content…
A chemist or an environmental scientist could take a sample from the lake and perform an acid-base extraction. That chemist or environmental scientist would be able to extract the upper and lower layers. He could then crystallized those layers, and then find the melting points of those layers. From this, he’ll be able to determine what chemical spilled into the