Question

When hot lava reaches seawater, the salts in the water react with steam to form gaseous hydrochloric acid. You are given an unbalanced chemical equation for one such reaction and the volume of HCl(g) produced. Explain how you would find the mass of solid sea salt needed to produce the given gas volume.

Answer 1

NaCl + H2O = HCl + NaOH

1) write the equation and balance the equation
2) convert the volume of the gas to moles of the gas PV=nRT
3) according to the stoichiometry of the reaction one mol of gas is produced by one mol of salt. Convert the mol of gas to mol of salt
4) calculate the molar mass of the salt and convert the mol of salt to g of salt (m= nxMM)

Answer 2

Their answer was correct but, you could also use the options they want you to on E2020 which are First, I would balance the chemical equation.

I would convert the volume of HCl to mol HCl by dividing by the molar volume.

Next, I would use the balanced equation to find out how many moles of the salt are needed to produce the moles of HCl.

Finally, I would multiply by the molar mass of the salt to convert moles to mass.