Acid-base extraction what role does sodium bicarbonate and sodium chloride play?

Answer 1

if ur talking bout naoh (dont no if this is same thing) than its purpose is to basify the solution your working with so it becomes soluble in a non-polar solvent.as im writing im thinkin naoh is sodium hydroxide rather than chloride but if lye is absent in the teknique ur usin than this is probably used for thesame purpose. how ever if your lookin to consume the product from the extraction than naoh would b better as if most of these a/b extraction are botched usin naoh, u will simply synthesize salt instead of something nasty as you would using some other chemicals. so if u dont no dont do it till u do or it may be your last extraction!!!!

Okay, the person above does not understand Chemistry nor the English language. The sodium chloride, NaCl, is a polar molecule, which would help separate an emulsion of two layers in an acid-base extraction. Since NaCl is polar, it would be easily dissolved into the solution and tie up the different layer molecules. Look at your solutions and see where the Na+ and the Cl- would aid in stabilizing the molecules. I believe this is how it works. Sodium bicarbonate should work the same way? I hope this helped. Just think about the polarities.