Soild Zinc metal reacts with silver nitrate in a single displacement reaction. If 100 grams of zinc is placed in a solution containing 500 grams of AgNO3 calculate the theoretical yield of silver.

Question

Then if 300 grams of silver are recovered by actually doing the reaction in step 1 what is the percent yield?

Answer 1

Let's write out the balanced chemical equation for this single displacement reaction first:

Zn_(s) + 2AgNO_3(aq) → 2Ag_(s) + Zn(NO₃)_2(aq)

Now we must determine if zinc or silver nitrate is the limiting reagent. Let's test zinc first:

100 g Zn * (1 mol Zn/65.38 g Zn) * (2 mol AgNO₃/1 mol Zn) * (169.87 g AgNO₃/1 mol AgNO₃) =

519.64 g AgNO₃

Therefore, we know that AgNO₃ is our limiting reagent, as we only have 500 g of it. Now that we know our limiting reagent, we can calculate the theoretical yield of silver:

500 g AgNO₃ * (1 mol AgNO₃/169.87 g AgNO₃) * (2 mol Ag/2 mol AgNO₃) * (107.8682 g Ag/1 mol Ag) =

317.5 g Ag