Question

What is the pH of a mixture of 0.042 M NaH2PO4 and 0.058 M Na2HPO4? Hint: The pKa of phosphate is 6.86.

Answer 1

Answer:

The pH value of the mixture will be 7.00

Explanation:

Mono and disodium hydrogen phosphate mixture act as a buffer to maintain pH value around 7. Henderson–Hasselbalch equation is used to determine the pH value of a buffer mixture, which is mathematically expressed as,

$pH=pK_{a} + log(\frac{[Base]}{[Acid]})$

According to the given conditions, the equation will become as follow

$pH=pK_{a} + log(\frac{[Na_{2}HPO_{4} ]}{[NaH_{2}PO_{4}]})$

The base and acid are assigned by observing the pKa values of both the compounds; smaller value means more acidic. NaH₂PO₄ has a pKa value of 6.86, while Na₂HPO₄ has a pKa value of 12.32 (not given, but it's a constant). Another more easy way is to the count the acidic hydrogen in the molecular formula; the compound with more acidic hydrogens will be assigned acidic and vice versa.

Placing all the given data we obtain,

$pH=6.86 + log(\frac{0.058}{0.042})$

$pH=7.00$