What mass of NaHCO3 would she need to ingest to neutralize this much HCl ? Be sure your answer has the correct number of significant digits.

Question

Sodium hydrogen carbonate NaHCO3

, also known as sodium bicarbonate or "baking soda", can be used to relieve acid indigestion. Acid indigestion is the burning sensation you get in your stomach when it contains too much hydrochloric acid HCl

, which the stomach secretes to help digest food. Drinking a glass of water containing dissolved NaHCO3

 neutralizes excess HCl

 through this reaction:

HCl

(aq) +

 NaHCO3

(aq) →

 NaCl

(aq) +

 H2O

(l) +

 CO2

(g)

The CO2

 gas produced is what makes you burp after drinking the solution.Suppose the fluid in the stomach of a woman suffering from indigestion can be considered to be 250.mL

 of a 0.022

 M HCl

 solution. What mass of NaHCO3

would she need to ingest to neutralize this much HCl

 ? Be sure your answer has the correct number of significant digits.

Answer 1

Hello Simrat,

To solve this problem you would first need to convert the molarity of the HCl to moles by multiplying the molarity by the volume in liters. Then you would use the reaction given to find that 1 mol HCl is equivalent to 1 mol NaHCO₃. Finally, you would use the periodic table to find the grams per mol ratio of NaHCO₃. So the dimensional analysis would look something like this:

(.022 mol HCl / 1 L) x (.250 L) x (1 mol NaCO₃ / 1 mol HCl) x (84.01 grams NaCO₃ / 1 mol NaCO₃)

This would equal .462055, which approximates to .46 grams NaCO₃ after rounding to significant figures.