Very weak acids

But a solution of carbon dioxide in water behaves as a very weak acid since the effective dissociation constant K is given by ... 

Note. For a very weak acid, the ammonium salt of which may dissociate rapidly on heating, conversion into the sodium salt rs recommended. Place o-1 g. of the acid in a boiling-tube and add NaOH solution until the mixture is just alkaline to litmus-paper. Add dil. HNO3 until just acid and then a slight excess of ammonia until again just alkaline. Add a piece of unglazed porcelain, and boil until the odour of ammonia is removed, and then cool. 

Example A common misconception is that the conjugate base of a weak acid is strong This is sometimes but not always true It is true for example for ammo nia which is a very weak acid (pK 36) Its conjugate base amide ion (H2N ) is a much stronger base than HO It is not true however for acetic acid both acetic acid and its conjugate base acetate ion are weak The conjugate base of a weak acid will be strong only when the acid is a weaker acid than water... 

The C—H bonds of hydrocarbons show little tendency to ionize and alkanes alkenes and alkynes are all very weak acids The acid dissociation constant for methane for exam pie IS too small to be measured directly but is estimated to be about 10 ° (pK 60)... 

The conjugate base of a hydrocarbon is called a carbanion It is an anion in which the negative charge is borne by carbon Because it is derived from a very weak acid a car banion such as CH3 is an exceptionally strong base... 

Although acetylene and terminal alkynes are far stronger acids than other hydro carbons we must remember that they are nevertheless very weak acids—much weaker than water and alcohols for example Hydroxide ion is too weak a base to convert acety lene to its anion m meaningful amounts The position of the equilibrium described by the following equation lies overwhelmingly to the left... 

The carbon-metal bonds of organolithium and organomagnesium compounds have appreciable carbamomc character Carbanions rank among the strongest bases that we 11 see m this text Their conjugate acids are hydrocarbons—very weak acids indeed The equilibrium constants for ionization of hydrocarbons are much smaller than the s for water and alcohols thus hydrocarbons have much larger pA s... 

Schwartz has published some hypothetical data for the titration of a 1.02 X ICr" M solution of a monoprotic weak acid (pXa = 8.16) with 1.004 X ICr M NaOH. " A 50-mL pipet is used to transfer a portion of the weak acid solution to the titration vessel. Calibration of the pipet, however, shows that it delivers a volume of only 49.94 ml. Prepare normal, first-derivative, second-derivative, and Gran plot titration curves for these data, and determine the equivalence point for each. How do these equivalence points compare with the expected equivalence point Comment on the utility of each titration curve for the analysis of very dilute solutions of very weak acids. 

Primary and secondary amines can also act as very weak acids ( 10 ). They react with acyl haUdes, anhydrides, and esters with rates depending on... 

Stibonic and Stibinic Acids. The stibonic acids, RSbO(OH)2, and stibinic acids, R2SbO(OH), are quite different in stmcture from their phosphoms and arsenic analogues. The stibonic and stibinic acids are polymeric compounds of unknown stmcture and are very weak acids. lUPAC classifies them as oxide hydroxides rather than as acids. Thus CgH3SbO(OH)2 is named phenyl antimony dihydroxide oxide [535-46-6], the Chemical Abstracts n.2ixn.e is dihydroxyphenylstibine oxide [535-46-6], CgH OgSb. 

Hydrogen peroxide is a very weak acid and in aqueous solutions only dissociates slightly (eq. 14) = 1.78 x 10 . Undissociated hydrogen... 

HOCf [7790-92-3] +1 yields very weak acid, piC 7.54 cannot be concentrated... 

Chapters 1 and 2. Most C—H bonds are very weakly acidic and have no tendency to ionize spontaneously to form carbanions. Reactions that involve carbanion intermediates are therefore usually carried out in the presence of a base which can generate the reactive carbanion intermediate. Base-catalyzed condensation reactions of carbonyl compounds provide many examples of this type of reaction. The reaction between acetophenone and benzaldehyde, which was considered in Section 4.2, for example, requires a basic catalyst to proceed, and the kinetics of the reaction show that the rate is proportional to the catalyst concentration. This is because the neutral acetophenone molecule is not nucleophihc and does not react with benzaldehyde. The much more nucleophilic enolate (carbanion) formed by deprotonation is the reactive nucleophile. 

In the discussion of the relative acidity of carboxylic acids in Chapter 1, the thermodynamic acidity, expressed as the acid dissociation constant, was taken as the measure of acidity. It is straightforward to determine dissociation constants of such adds in aqueous solution by measurement of the titration curve with a pH-sensitive electrode (pH meter). Determination of the acidity of carbon acids is more difficult. Because most are very weak acids, very strong bases are required to cause deprotonation. Water and alcohols are far more acidic than most hydrocarbons and are unsuitable solvents for generation of hydrocarbon anions. Any strong base will deprotonate the solvent rather than the hydrocarbon. For synthetic purposes, aprotic solvents such as ether, tetrahydrofuran (THF), and dimethoxyethane (DME) are used, but for equilibrium measurements solvents that promote dissociation of ion pairs and ion clusters are preferred. Weakly acidic solvents such as DMSO and cyclohexylamine are used in the preparation of strongly basic carbanions. The high polarity and cation-solvating ability of DMSO facilitate dissociation... 

It has been found that there is often a correlation between the rate of deprotonation (kinetic acidity) and the thermodynamic stability of the carbanion (thermodynamic acidity). Because of this relationship, kinetic measurements can be used to construct orders of hydrocarbon acidities. These kinetic measurements have the advantage of not requiring the presence of a measurable concentration of the carbanion at any time instead, the relative ease of carbanion formation is judged from the rate at which exchange occurs. This method is therefore applicable to very weak acids, for which no suitable base will generate a measurable carbanion concentration. 

Alcohols are typically very weak acids with pKa values in the range of 7 - 20 (compared with a pK value of 4.8 for acetic acid). 

The Dissociation Constant of Nitric Acid. The largest value of K in Table 9 is that for the (HS04) ion. In Fig. 36 there is a gap of more than 0.2 electron-volt below the level of the (H30)1 ion. As is well known, several acids exist which in aqueous solution fall iu the intermediate region between the very weak acids and the recognized strong acids the proton levels of these acids will fall in this gap. The values of K for these acids obtained by different methods seldom show close agreement. Results obtained by various methods were compared in 1946 by Redlich,1 who discussed the difficulties encountered. 

Where do hydrocarbons lie on the acidity scale As the data in Table 8.1 show, both methane (pKa 60) and ethylene (plC, = 44) are very weak acids and thus do not react with any of the common bases. Acetylene, however, has piCa = 25 and can be deprotonated by the conjugate base of any acid whose pKa is greater than 25. Amide ion (NH2-), for example, the conjugate base of ammonia (pKa - 35), is often used to aeprotonate terminal aikynes. 

In addition to their behavior as bases, primary and secondary amines can also act as very weak acids because an N-H proton can be removed by a sufficiently strong base. We ve seen, for example, how diisopropylamine (pK-A 40) reacts with butyilithium to yield lithium diisopropylamide (LDA Section 22.5). Dialkylamine anions like LDA are extremely powerful bases that are often used... 

For the titration of chlorides, fluorescein may be used. This indicator is a very weak acid (Ka = ca lx 10-8) hence even a small amount of other acids reduces the already minute ionisation, thus rendering the detection of the end point (which depends essentially upon the adsorption of the free anion) either impossible or difficult to observe. The optimum pH range is between 7 and 10. Dichlorofluorescein is a stronger acid and may be utilised in slightly acid solutions of pH greater than 4.4 this indicator has the further advantage that it is applicable in more dilute solutions. 

It may be noted that very weak acids, such as boric acid and phenol, which cannot be titrated potentiometrically in aqueous solution, can be titrated conductimetrically with relative ease. Mixtures of certain acids can be titrated more accurately by conductimetric than by potentiometric (pH) methods. Thus mixtures of hydrochloric acid (or any other strong acid) and acetic (ethanoic) acid (or any other weak acid of comparable strength) can be titrated with a weak base (e.g. aqueous ammonia) or with a strong base (e.g. sodium hydroxide) reasonably satisfactory end points are obtained. 

For very weak acids however, e.g. boric acid [trioxoboric(III) acid], the initial conductance is very small but increases as the neutralisation proceeds owing to the salt formed. The conductance values near the equivalence point are high because of hydrolysis beyond the equivalence point the hydrolysis is considerably reduced by the excess alkali. To determine the end point, values of the conductance considerably removed from the equivalence point must therefore be used for extrapolation. 

Pyman and Timmis investigated azo coupling reactions of imidazoles as long ago as 1922. Ridd and coworkers suggested in another relatively early publication (Brown et al., 1953) that reaction of imidazole occurs not via the neutral molecule but via the anion, despite the fact that imidazole is a very weak acid (pK = 14.5). Butler s group (Anderson et al., 1989) confirmed this suggestion by kinetic experiments in the pH range 6.52-7.48, supported by informative MNDO calculations. 

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