Inorganic Chemistry 1

CHEMF214

Instructor-in-charge
Inamur R. Laskar

Chemistry of Aqueous & Non-aqueous solvents

Chemistry in Aqueous and Nonaqueous Solvents

Molten Salts

What is molten salts??

Room temperature molten salts

Unreactivity of molten salts

Complex formation
Read the book of Huheey

Oxidation Reduction Reactions:

Introduction
Introduction (oxidizing and reducing agents, redox reactions
etc)

Reduction potentials
Redox half-reactions and redox reaction
Redox couples
Standard potentials and spontaneity

Book: Shriver and Atkins: Inorganic Chemistry (uploaded in

Nalanda in series)

Q1. The dissociation constant of nitric acid in water is 20

whereas in methanol 2.5 x 10-4-why?
Q2. Silver perchlorate is significantly more soluble in benzene
than in alkane solvents. Account for the observation in terms
of Lewis acid base properties.
Q3. Of the donor-acceptor complexes (CH3)3N-SO3 and H3N-SO3
in the gas phase. (a) Which has the longer N-S bond?
(b) Which has the larger N-S-O angle?
Q4. Why were most of the metals used in early prehistory class
(b) (soft in HSAB terminology) metals?

Dipole moments
Permittivity

Methanol
1.7
32.7

Water
1.85
76

Amphoteric solvents
The most important nonaqueous solvents of this class are the lower
alcohols methanol and ethanol. They resemble water in their acidbase
properties but, because of their lower dielectric constants, facilitate
processes producing ions to a much smaller extent. In particular, the
ion products of these solvents are much smaller (Ks = 1017 for CH3OH
and 1019 for C2H5OH, compared with 1014 for water), and the
dissociation constants of molecular acids and bases are uniformly lower than
in water by four to five powers of 10. Nitric acid, for example, which is almost
completely dissociated in water (Ka about 20), has Ka = 2.5 104 in methanol.
On the other hand, the equilibrium constants of processes such as
NH4+ + ROH NH3 + ROH2+ and CH3CO2 + ROH CH3CO2H + RO are similar
in all three solvents, since they do not involve any change in the number of
ions.