Question

State what do you observe when: ammonium hydroxide is added to iron (III) sulphate solution.

Answer 1

Hint: The molecular formula of ammonium hydroxide is $N{{H}_{4}}OH$ and iron (III) sulphate is $F{{e}_{2}}{{(S{{O}_{4}})}_{3}}$ . Iron (II) sulphate is different from Iron (III) sulphate. Ammonium hydroxide and iron (III) sulphate are soluble in water.

Complete step by step solution: - In the question it is asked what products we are going to when ammonium hydroxide is added to iron (III) sulphate solution.
- First we should know the molecular formulas of the given compounds and they are as follows.
- The molecular formula of ammonium hydroxide is $N{{H}_{4}}OH$ .
- The molecular formula of ferrous (III) sulphate is $F{{e}_{2}}{{(S{{O}_{4}})}_{3}}$ .
- The chemical reaction of ammonium hydroxide is added to iron (III) sulphate solution is as follows.
\[F{{e}_{2}}{{(S{{O}_{4}})}_{3}}+6N{{H}_{4}}OH\to 2\underset{Ferric\text{ }hydroxide}{\mathop{Fe{{(OH)}_{3}}}}\,+3{{(N{{H}_{4}})}_{2}}S{{O}_{4}}\]
- In the above chemical reaction one mole of iron (III) sulphate is going to react with 6 moles of ammonium hydroxide and forms two moles of ferric hydroxide and 3 moles of ammonium sulphate as the products.
- The formed ferric hydroxide is a reddish brown color precipitate and going to settle at the bottom of the beaker.
- We can identify the completion of the chemical reaction by observing the brown precipitate at the bottom of the solution.

Note: The formed ferric hydroxide by the reaction of ammonium hydroxide with iron (III) sulphate is not going to get soluble in the presence of excess ammonium hydroxide solution. We can call this type of chemical reaction a precipitation reaction.