What mass of magnesium oxide results from thermal decomposition of #250*g# of magnesium carbonate?
2 Answers
Approx.
Explanation:
With all these sorts of questions, the first thing you need is a stoichiometrically balanced equation:
You simply have to know that under (FIERCE) heating, all metal carbonates decompose to the metal oxide and carbon dioxide as shown. The balanced equation says that each equiv of metal carbonate decomposes to give one equiv magnesium oxide and one equiv of carbon dioxide.
Note that ALL metal carbonates behave this way under heat. If I heated it further, under reducing conditions (i.e. add some silicon for magensium metal), I could probably reduce this oxide to the metal and
So we start with a molar quantity of:
The balanced equation says that I should get
But if recovery is
Note that chemists (and you are one!) go to the trouble of writing out the units as an aid in calculation. It is all too easy to mulitply when we should divide, or vice versa, and everybody has done it. In our calculation we had the units:
The balanced equation of thermal decomposition reaction of
Considring atomic masses as
As per balanced equation
84g
250g
Cinsidering usage of the process as 85% the production of MgO will be