From the Electrolysis of concentrated copper(ii) sulphate using carbon electrodes, what product will I get ?
1 Answer
You will get oxygen and metallic copper.
Explanation:
You have a mixture of
Something must be oxidized, and something must be reduced, so you consult a table of standard reduction potentials like the one below to find suitable candidates,
The only candidate for reduction in the table is
Now,we look for candidates for oxidation.
We see two possibilities in the table:
The reaction that requires the least voltage is the formation of oxygen.
Thus the electrolytic cell half-reactions are:
Thus, if you electrolyze a solution of