why do you add saturated sodium bicarbonate to your crude aspirin? why do you later add 3M HCL?
Aspirin is insoluble in water . However on addition Sodium
bicarbonate reacts vigorously producing carbon dioxide gas, which
also produces enough agitation to allow the active ingredients to
dissolve.
The main purpose of the sodium bicarbonate is to deprotonate the
carboxylic acid in acetylsalicylic acid to produce a sodium
acetylsalicylate salt which is much more soluble in water (due to
the presence of a charged carboxylate group). The reaction between
NaHCO3 and acetylsalicylic acid yields H2CO3 (hence, H2O +
CO2).
Later on the sodium salt is again convertetd to acid form by HCL.
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