Question #131c8
1 Answer
Rounded to the proper number of sig figs, the reaction will produce 54.93 g of phosphorus trichloride.
SIDE NOTE You can actually have two forms of phosphorus that can participate in this reaction, white phosphorus,
White phosphorus is the most common form used for this reaction, so I'll use that form. The chemical equation will be different, but the strategy is exactly the same for red phosphorus.
The balanced chemical equation for this reaction looks like this
Notice that you have a
So, in order to see whether or not you're dealing with a limiting reagent, calculate the number of moles available for the reaction
and
Since 0.1000 moles of white phosphorus would have required
you could say that chlorine is the limiting reagent by a very, very small margin. The number of moles of white phosphorus that will react is
This is equivalent to a mass of
According to the law of mass conservation, the mass of the product must be equal to the sum of the masses of the reactants that actually participated in the reaction.
The mass of phosphorus trichloride will be
The number of sig figs you have to use will really impact the answer. If you round this to four sig figs, you'll get
Notice that this is also the amount produced when all of the white phosphorus reacts.