what is neutralization?
Answers
Answer:
neutralization is a reaction in which acids and reacts to form a product.
Here for understanding neutralization, I am giving an experimental example.
Take 10ml dilute HCl in a beaker. Use a glass rod to put a drop of this solution on a pH paper pH indicator strip and record the pH of the solution. Add to it a few drops of dilute NaOH solution by means of a dropper and stir the solution with the glass rod. Measure the pH of the resulting solution by putting a drop of this solution on another pH paper. In this manner, go on adding dilute NaOH drop by drop and recording the pH. What do you find? Stop adding NaOH when a green colour appears on the pH paper, that is when the pH of the solution becomes 7.
The neutralization reaction: Both HCl and NaOH dissociate in their aqueous solutions. Addition of NaOH solution to HCl solution is like adding a large concentration of OH- ions to a large concentration of H+ ions. However water dissociates into H+ and OH- ions to a very small extent. Therefore, on mixing, the excess OH- ions combine with the excess H+ ions to form H2O molecules which mix with the solvent water. This change can be represented by the ionic equation shown as follows.
(H+) + (Cl-) + (Na+) + OH- → (Na+) + (Cl-) + H2O
As the NaOH solution is added drop by drop to the HCl solution, the concentration of H+ goes on decreasing due to combination with added OH- ions, and that is how the pH goes on increasing.
When enough NaOH is added to HCl, the resulting aqueous solution contains only Na+ and Cl- ions, that is, NaCl, a salt, and the solvent water. The only source of H+ and OH- ions in this solution is dissociation of water. Therefore, this reaction is called the neutralization reaction. The neutralization reaction is also represented by the following simple equation.
HCl + NaOH → NaCl + H2O
Acid base salt water