How many grams of sodium hydroxide are needed to completely neutralize 25.0 grams of sulfuric acid?

1 Answer
Jun 8, 2016

20.4g NaOH

Explanation:

A Neutralization reaction occurs when a strong acid reacts with a strong base to produce water and a salt (ionic compound).
In our case, sulfuric acid (strong acid) will react with sodium hydroxide (strong base) to form water and sodium sulfate:

H2SO4+2NaOHNa2SO4+2H2O

We start with the units that we want to end up with and we set that equal to our given value, which will be multiplied by a conversion factor (the molar ratio from the balanced chemical equation). The 98.08gmol represents the molar mass of sulfuric acid and the 40.0gmol is the molar mass of sodium hydroxide.

So, what we have is:

gNaOH = 25.0gH2SO4×1molH2SO498.08gH2SO4×2molNaOH1molH2SO4×40.0gNaOH1molNaOH = 20.4g NaOH