Quality Control For Athenium Baking Soda Company

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Quality Control for the Athenium Baking Soda Company Introduction Sodium hydrogen carbonate or sodium bicarbonate is better known as baking soda, and its uses in everyday life are numerous. Baking soda acts as a deodorizer, household cleaner, fire extinguisher, tooth and denture cleaner, and even as an antacid. Because sodium bicarbonate is a naturally occurring compound, it can be used as an alternative to cleaning products that are potentially environmental harming agents. In this experiment, the purity of a baking soda sample will be determined. One method for preparing baking soda is through reacting crystalline ammonium hydrogen carbonate with brine according to the following equation: NH4HCO3(s) + NaCl (aq) --> NaHCO3(aq) +NH4Cl(aq) Eq. 1 Brine contains sodium chloride, the compound needed to make baking soda, as well as potassium chloride, lithium chloride, and calcium chloride. Once the reaction has been completed, the solid baking soda is filtered off, but some contaminants may be present in the solid. The first step in determining the purity of the sample is to perform thermal gravimetric analysis (Experiment 7) on the baking soda sample to determine the percent composition of sodium bicarbonate in the sample. A sample of the baking soda will be heated until it decomposes to leave solid sodium carbonate according to the following equation: 2NaHCO3(s) --> Na2CO3(s) + CO2(g) + H2O(g) Eq. 2 The calculated percent by mass of the sodium bicarbonate should be 100% or nearly 100% if it is pure; if the percent by mass significantly deviates from this percentage, then further experimentation is needed to determine what other substances are present in the sample. The second experimental procedure to determine the purity of the baking soda sample is a titration of a baking soda solution and

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