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Magnesium Sulfate for Phosphate Buffer??
Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 4:30 pm
by pears123
Hello I am doing the "Water to Fuel to Water" Experiment under your chemistry category and I was wondering if the 0.1 M Phosphate Buffer can be substituted for a magnesium-sulfate hepta-hydrate solution? If not, why? Thanks for the help!
Re: Magnesium Sulfate for Phosphate Buffer??
Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2014 10:33 am
by deleted-2131
Hi pears123,
Unfortunately, no, you won't get good results if you use MgSO4-6H2O instead of the buffer described. Acid-base buffers require having conjugate weak acid-base pairs (in fairly large quantities) with appropriate acid dissociation constants to keep pH at the desired value. MgSO4-6H2O doesn't meet those requirements. Check out this webpage, which gives a very nice overview of how acid-base buffers work:
http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Physical_Ch ... es/Buffers. If you've had a chemistry class in high school, you should be able to follow what the webpage describes.