Saeid Z.

asked • 04/04/20

Potassium Hydroxide from Potassium sulfate

Hello

Hope you are fine

I had reacted 2 pressures:

Potassium Sulfate with Ca(OH)2

Potassium Sulfate with NaOH

I Mixed them with enough water in atmospheric situation then separate CaSO4 and NaSo4 with filtration method.

Evaporated liquid but I collected just 15% solid and KOH content was less that 10%.

What Was my fault?

Temperature, Pressure, Mixing, Separation or ....

Please Help me.

thanks a lot.

Philip S.

Hello, I am confused by the question. 1) Do you have to start potassium sulfate and calcium hydroxide? 2) sodium sulfate is soluble in water 3) How do you potassium sulfate + calcium hydroxide is favorable? Did you actually make calcium sulfate or did you just keep calcium hydroxide? The chemical equation would be K2SO4 + Ca(OH)2 --> 2KOH + CaSO4. I did a quick search of standard gibbs free energy of formation values (25 C and 1 bar) and got the following; G for K2SO4 = -1319.6 kJ/mol, G for Ca(OH)2 = -1334.3 kJ/mol, G for CaSO4 = -898.4 kJ/mol, and G for KOH = 2*(-380.2) since the stiochiometric number is 2. If you run gibbs energy of formation (G for products - G reactants) you should G = +123 kJ/mol, which would say the reaction is unfavorable. http://chemistry.alanearhart.org/resources/Handouts/freeenergy-qr.pdf
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04/10/20

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