Chemistry Stoichiometry

Question

if 10.8 moles of sodium nitrate reacts with excess iron iii chloride, how many moles of iron iii nitrate can theoretically be made?

Answer 1

To answer this question we must balance the chemical equation. The question states that the cation is iron(III) so we know that it has a 3+ charge. The anion is nitrate or NO3-. It is important to either know, or look up, the charge of the nitrate anion to properly balance the equation. Since nitrate has only a -1 charge there will need to be three to balance the 3+ charge of the cation. That gives us the following balanced equation.

3 NaNO3 +FeCl3 --> Fe(NO3)3 + 3 NaCl

Now that we have the balanced equation we can determine how many moles of iron (III) nitrate we can make. For every three moles of sodium nitrate we make one mole of iron(III) nitrate, so to find out how many moles of iron(III) nitrate we can make we need to divide the moles of sodium nitrate by three.

10.8/3 = 3.6