Question

7. (3 pts.) In your experiment, sodium bisulfite in water is used to destroy any unreacted bromine, Brz, or to TRAP the Br2 and not allow it to escape from the reaction. The reaction is shown below but can't be described using conventional organic curved-arrow pushing. After adding sodium bisulfite in your procedure, why is the resulting mixture put into acid waste? - Nat -HSO, + Br2 + H2O sodium bisulfite Na-HSO, + 2 HB sodium bisulfate

Answer 1

When the following reaction take place, HBr is produced. HBr stands for Hydrogen Bromide .Hydrobromic acid which is a strong mineral acid is produced when Hbr is dissolved in water .It has a pKa of -9 which makes it stronger acid than even Hydrochloric acid.Also, sodium bisulfate when dissolved in water becomes higly acidic .Hence the resulting mixture sould be put in acid waste carboy.The strong acid should be diluted or nuetralised prior to disposal and disposed in small quantities lesser than 5ml down the drain.