Determine the limiting reactant for the reaction of sodium carbonate and nickel(II) chloride using the quantities listed below. 6.279 g solid nickel(II) chloride 500.0 mL of 0.1010 M sodium carbonate

The limiting reactant is the 6.279 g of

Explanation:

We have to start with the reaction between sodium carbonate () and the Nickel (II) Chloride (), so:

We will have a double replacement reaction. Now we have to balance the reaction, so:

The next step is the calculation of the moles for each reactive. For we have use the molarity equation:

For the calculation of moles of we have to use the molar mass of the compound (129.59 g/mol):

The next step is the division of each mole value by the coefficient of each reactive of the balance reaction. In this case we have "1" for each reactive, so:

The final step is to choose the smallest value. In this case is the value that correspond to . Therefore is the limiting reactive.

The equation for this is NaOH + HNO3 --> H2O + NaNO3, a double displacement (titration) reaction. This is already a balanced reaction, so we can solve for the concentration of HNO3 using:
(30.0 mL)(0.50 M NaOH) = (15.0 mL)x
x = 1.00 M HNO3

If we have the HNO3 solution (of unknown concentration), titration is the process of slowly dropping the NaOH (of known concentration) into the solution. With an appropriate indicator, a visible color change will be seen, signifying the end point. This allows us to estimate the concentration of the HNO3 solution.