Yup, yup.

We know that Hydrochloric Acid + Zinc makes Hydrogen gas.

 

But, I don't know.

What concentration of acid should I use?

High school lab project.

I need to produce a fair amount of hydrogen...not too much. Enough to fill an emu egg.

 

I have 12M HCl at my disposal..but I don't want to use something so concentrated. I'm just trying to think what a good, safe concentration would be. I can easily dilute it down to whatever I need...but...

 

I am not worried about the method, steps or equations of arriving at this conclusion, but a general understanding of what you are thinking is great I obviously would like to learn about your conclusions...but pushing my through equations isn't truly necessary.

Edited October 17, 200817 yr by DeepBlue

What's the volume of an emu egg? Less than a liter? Call it a liter. IIRC ~22liter equals a mole of a gas at stp. So 2 x 0.05 mole of HCl for a little over a liter of H2, very roughly. 100ml of 1M or 200ml of 0.5M HCl should do nicely. Depends on how fast you want it to react. Maybe you'd want to go larger quantity of less concentration, its been a long time since I've handled HCl so I'm just guessing as to a reasonably safe concentration to handle.

1M is pretty dang safe -- I've watched a chemistry teacher get it all over her hands with now problems. (She dried it off in a minute or two.)

I completed the experiment today using 1.5M solution.

 

Went well!

Appreciate the help

Just out of curiousity, why did you fill an emu egg with H2? Sounds like something fun.

when i use 12M HCl in the laboratory I find it very concentrated. Not a very good idea to use 12M for zinc becuase that way you will lose a lot of hydrogen and the acid will eat away the metal. Good to hear you have done the experiment though!

the acid will eat away the metal.

 

That's the whole idea.

Just out of curiousity, why did you fill an emu egg with H2? Sounds like something fun.

 

We were asked to create a fairly simply and exciting experiment to demonstrate to a group of grade 9's in the high school. It's part of our mark

 

Creating hydrogen and blowing it up is exciting enough, and scientific!

did the egg eggsplode? hehehehe

We were asked to create a fairly simply and exciting experiment to demonstrate to a group of grade 9's in the high school. It's part of our mark

 

Creating hydrogen and blowing it up is exciting enough, and scientific!

 

It was something fun.

Glad to have helped.