Acidbase reaction


Acid–base reaction, a type of chemical process typified by the exchange of one or more hydrogen ions, H+, between species that may be neutral (molecules, such as water, H2O; or acetic acid, CH3CO2H) or electrically charged (ions, such as ammonium, NH4+; hydroxide, OH; or carbonate, CO32-). It also includes analogous behaviour of molecules and ions that are acidic but do not donate hydrogen ions (aluminum chloride, AlCl3, and the silver ion AG+).

Acids are chemical compounds that show, in water solution, a sharp taste, a corrosive action on metals, and the ability to turn certain blue vegetable dyes red. Bases are chemical compounds that, in solution, are soapy to the touch and turn red vegetable dyes blue. When mixed, acids and bases neutralize one another and produce salts, substances with a salty taste and none of the characteristic properties of either acids or bases.

The idea that some substances are acids whereas others are bases is almost as old as chemistry, and the terms acid, base, and salt occur very early in the writings of the medieval alchemists. Acids were probably the first of these to be recognized, apparently because of their sour taste. The English word acid, the French acide, the German Säure, and the Russian kislota are all derived from words meaning sour (Latin acidus, German sauer, Old Norse sūur, and Russian kisly). Other properties associated at an early date with acids were their solvent, or corrosive, action; their effect on vegetable dyes; and the effervescence resulting when they were applied to chalk (production of bubbles of carbon dioxide gas). Bases (or alkalies) were characterized mainly by their ability to neutralize acids and form salts, the latter being typified rather loosely as crystalline substances soluble in water and having a saline taste.

In spite of their imprecise nature, these ideas served to correlate a considerable range of qualitative observations, and many of the commonest chemical materials that early chemists encountered could be classified as acids (hydrochloric, sulfuric, nitric, and carbonic acids), bases (soda, potash, lime, ammonia), or salts (common salt, sal ammoniac, saltpetre, alum, borax). The absence of any apparent physical basis for the phenomena concerned made it difficult to make quantitative progress in understanding acid–base behaviour, but the ability of a fixed quantity of acid to neutralize a fixed quantity of base was one of the earliest examples of chemical equivalence: the idea that a certain measure of one substance is in some chemical sense equal to a different amount of a second substance. In addition, it was found quite early that one acid could be displaced from a salt with another acid, and this made it possible to arrange acids in an approximate order of strength. It also soon became clear that many of these displacements could take place in either direction according to experimental conditions. This phenomenon suggested that acid–base reactions are reversible—that is, that the products of the reaction can interact to regenerate the starting material. It also introduced the concept of equilibrium to acid–base chemistry: this concept states that reversible chemical reactions reach a point of balance, or equilibrium, at which the starting materials and the products are each regenerated by one of the two reactions as rapidly as they are consumed by the other.

Apart from their theoretical interest, acids and bases play a large part in industrial chemistry and in everyday life. Sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide are among the products manufactured in largest amounts by the chemical industry, and a large percentage of chemical processes involve acids or bases as reactants or as catalysts. Almost every biological chemical process is closely bound up with acid–base equilibria in the cell, or in the organism as a whole, and the acidity or alkalinity of the soil and water are of great importance for the plants or animals living in them. Both the ideas and the terminology of acid–base chemistry have permeated daily life, and the term salt is especially common.

Theoretical definitions of acids and bases

Hydrogen and hydroxide ions

The first attempt at a theoretical interpretation of acid behaviour was made by Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier at the end of the 18th century. Lavoisier supposed that all acids must contain oxygen, and this idea was incorporated in the names used for this element in the various languages; the English oxygen, from the Greek oxys (sour) and genna (production); the German Sauerstoff, literally acid material; and the Russian kislorod, from kislota (acid). Following the discovery that hydrochloric acid contained no oxygen, Sir Humphry Davy about 1815 first recognized that the key element in acids was hydrogen. Not all substances that contain hydrogen, however, are acids, and the first really satisfactory definition of an acid was given by Justus von Liebig of Germany in 1838. According to Liebig, an acid is a compound containing hydrogen in a form in which it can be replaced by a metal. This definition held the field for about 50 years and is still considered essentially correct, though somewhat outmoded. At the time of Liebig’s proposal, bases were still regarded solely as substances that neutralized acids with the production of salts, and nothing was known about the constitutional features of bases that enabled them to do this.

The whole subject of acid–base chemistry acquired a new look and a quantitative aspect with the advent of the electrolytic dissociation theory propounded by Wilhelm Ostwald and Svante August Arrhenius (both Nobel laureates) in the 1880s. The principal feature of this theory is that certain compounds, called electrolytes, dissociate in solution to give ions. With the development of this theory it was realized that acids are merely those hydrogen compounds that give rise to hydrogen ions (H+) in aqueous solution. It was also realized at that time that there is a correspondence between the degree of acidity of a solution (as shown by effects on vegetable dyes and other properties) and the concentration of hydrogen ions in the solution. Correspondingly, basic (or alkaline) properties could then be associated with the presence of hydroxide ions (OH) in aqueous solution, and the neutralization of acids by bases could be explained in terms of the reaction of these two ions to give the neutral molecule water (H+ + OH → H2O). This led naturally to the simple definition that acids and bases are substances that give rise, respectively, to hydrogen and hydroxide ions in aqueous solution. This definition was generally accepted for the next 30 or 40 years. In purely qualitative terms, it does not offer many advantages over Liebig’s definition of acids, but it does provide a satisfactory definition for bases.

Nevertheless, there is a great advantage in the definition of acids and bases in terms of hydrogen and hydroxide ions, and this advantage lies in its quantitative aspects. Because the concentrations of hydrogen and hydroxide ions in solution can be measured, notably by determining the electrical conductivity of the solution (its ability to carry an electrical current), a quantitative measure of the acidity or alkalinity of the solution is provided. Moreover, the equations developed to express the relationships between the various components of reversible reactions can be applied to acid and base dissociations to give definite values, called dissociation constants. These constants can be used to characterize the relative strengths (degrees of dissociation) of acids and bases and, for this reason, supersede earlier semiquantitative estimates of acid or base strength. As a result of this approach, a satisfactory quantitative description was given at an early date of a large mass of experimental observations, a description that remains essentially unaffected by later developments in definitions of acid–base reactions.

The success of these quantitative developments, however, unfortunately helped to conceal some ambiguities and logical inconsistencies in the qualitative definitions of acids and bases in terms of the production of hydrogen and hydroxide ions, respectively. For example, it was not clear whether a substance like anhydrous hydrogen chloride, which would not conduct electricity, should be regarded as an acid or whether it should be considered an acid only after it had come in contact with water. A modified definition of bases also seemed to be required that would be applicable to nonaqueous solutions, in which the anion (negatively charged ion) produced is not the hydroxide ion, as is the case in water, but varies from solvent to solvent, the methoxide ion (CH3O) acting as the basic anion in methanol (CH3OH), for example, and the amide ion (NH2) playing the same role in liquid ammonia (NH3). Even with acids the solvent is involved, since there is much evidence to show that the so-called hydrogen ion in solution does not exist as H+ but always contains at least one molecule of solvent, as H3O+ in water, CH3OH2+ in methanol, and NH4+ in liquid ammonia. These considerations led to the development of definitions of acids and bases that depended on the solvent (see below Alternative definitions). In spite of this change, however, the difficulty still remained that typical acid–base properties, such as neutralization, indicator (vegetable dye) effects, and catalysis, often took place in solvents such as benzene or chloroform in which free ions could barely be detected at all (by conductivity measurements). Even for aqueous solutions a particular ambiguity arises in the definition of bases, some of which (for example, metallic hydroxides) contain a hydroxyl group, whereas others (such as amines) do not. The latter produce hydroxide ions in solution by reacting with water molecules.


The Brønsted–Lowry definition

In order to resolve the various difficulties in the hydrogen–hydroxide ion definitions of acids and bases, a new, more generalized definition was proposed in 1923 almost simultaneously by J.M. Brønsted and T.M. Lowry. Although the pursuit of exact verbal definitions of qualitative concepts is usually not profitable in physical science, the Brønsted–Lowry definition of acids and bases has had far-reaching consequences in the understanding of a wide range of phenomena and in the stimulation of much experimental work. The definition is as follows: an acid is a species having a tendency to lose a proton, and a base is a species having a tendency to gain a proton. The term proton means the species H+ (the nucleus of the hydrogen atom) rather than the actual hydrogen ions that occur in various solutions; the definition is thus independent of the solvent. The use of the word species rather than substance or molecule implies that the terms acid and base are not restricted to uncharged molecules but apply also to positively or negatively charged ions. This extension is one of the important features of the Brønsted–Lowry definition. It can be summarized by the equation A ⇄ B + H+, in which A and B together are a conjugate acid–base pair. In such a pair A must obviously have one more positive charge (or one less negative charge) than B, but there is no other restriction on the sign or magnitude of the charges.

Several examples of conjugate acid–base pairs are given in the table.

Examples of conjugate acid-base pairs
acid base
acetic acid, CH3CO2H acetate ion, CH3CO2
bisulfate ion, HSO4 sulfate ion, SO42−
ammonium ion, NH4+ ammonia, NH3
ammonia, NH3 amide ion, NH2
water, H2O hydroxide ion, OH
hydronium (oxonium) ion, H3O+ water, H2O

A number of points about the Brønsted–Lowry definition should be emphasized:

1. As mentioned above, this definition is independent of the solvent. The ions derived from the solvent (H3O+ and OH in water and NH4+ and NH2 in liquid ammonia) are not accorded any special status but appear as examples of acids or bases in terms of the general definition. On the other hand, of course, they will be particularly important species for reactions in the solvent to which they relate.

2. In addition to the familiar molecular acids, two classes of ionic acids emerge from the new definition. The first comprises anions derived from acids containing more than one acidic hydrogen—e.g., the bisulfate ion (HSO4) and primary and secondary phosphate ions (H2PO4 and HPO42−) derived from phosphoric acid (H3PO4). The second and more interesting class consists of positively charged ions (cations), such as the ammonium ion (NH4+), which can be derived by the addition of a proton to a molecular base, in this case ammonia (NH3). The hydronium ion (H3O+), which is the hydrogen ion in aqueous solution, also belongs to this class. The charge of these ionic acids, of course, always must be balanced by ions of opposite charges, but these oppositely charged ions usually are irrelevant to the acid–base properties of the system. For example, if sodium bisulfate (Na+HSO4) or ammonium chloride (NH4+Cl) is used as an acid, the sodium ion (Na+) and the chloride ion (Cl) contribute nothing to the acidic properties and could equally well be replaced by other ions, such as potassium (K+) and perchlorate (ClO4), respectively.

3. Molecules such as ammonia and organic amines are bases by virtue of their tendency to accept a proton. With metallic hydroxides such as sodium hydroxide, on the other hand, the basic properties are due to the hydroxide ion itself, the sodium ion serving merely to preserve electrical neutrality. Moreover, not only the hydroxide ion but also the anions of other weak acids (for example, the acetate ion) must be classed as bases because of their tendency to reform the acid by accepting a proton. Formally, the anion of any acid might be regarded as a base, but for the anion of a very strong acid (the chloride ion, for example) the tendency to accept a proton is so weak that its basic properties are insignificant and it is inappropriate to describe it as a base. Similarly, all hydrogen compounds could formally be defined as acids, but in many of them (for example, most hydrocarbons, such as methane, CH4) the tendency to lose a proton is so small that the term acid would not normally be applied to them.

4. Some species, including molecules as well as ions, possess both acidic and basic properties; such materials are said to be amphoteric. Both water and ammonia are amphoteric, a situation that can be represented by the schemes H3O+–H2O–OH and NH4+–NH3–NH2. Another example is the secondary phosphate ion, HPO42−, which can either lose or accept a proton, according to the following equations: HPO42 ⇄ PO43 + H+ and HPO42 + H+ ⇄ H2PO4. The amphoteric properties of water are particularly important in determining its properties as a solvent for acid–base reactions.

5. The equation A ⇄ B + H+, used in the Brønsted–Lowry definition, does not represent a reaction that can be observed in practice, since the free proton, H+, can be observed only in gaseous systems at low pressures. In solution, the proton always is attached to some other species, commonly a solvent molecule. Thus in water the ion H3O+ consists of a proton bound to a water molecule. For this reason all observable acid–base reactions in solution are combined in pairs, with the result that they are of the form A1 + B2 ⇄ B1 + A2. The fact that the process A ⇄ B + H+ cannot be observed does not imply any serious inadequacy of the definition. A similar situation exists with the definitions of oxidizing and reducing agents, which are defined respectively as species having a tendency to gain or lose electrons, even though one of these reactions never occurs alone and free electrons are never detected in solution (any more than free protons are).

Alternative definitions

Although the Brønsted–Lowry concept of acids and bases as donors and acceptors of protons is still the most generally accepted one, other definitions are often encountered. Certain of these are adapted for special situations only, but the most important of these other definitions is in some respects more general than the Brønsted–Lowry definition. This definition was first proposed by the American chemist Gilbert N. Lewis in 1923.

According to Lewis, an acid is a species that can accept an electron pair from a base with the formation of a chemical bond composed of a shared electron pair (covalent bond). This classification includes as bases the same species covered by the Brønsted–Lowry definition, since a molecule or ion that can accept a proton does so because it has one or more unshared pairs of electrons, and therefore it also can combine with electron acceptors other than the proton. On the other hand, the typical Lewis acids need not (and usually do not) contain protons, being species with outer electron shells that are capable of expansion, such as boron trifluoride (BF3), sulfur trioxide (SO3), and silver ion (Ag+). Lewis originally based his ideas on the experimental fact that these nonprotonic acids often exhibit the properties regarded as typical of acids, such as neutralization of bases, action on indicators, and catalysis. Such substances often are electron acceptors, but this is not always the case; carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen pentoxide (N2O5), for example, contain completed octets of electrons and, according to usual valence theory, cannot accept any more. In addition, hydrogen-containing substances that have always been regarded as acids (acetic acid, for example) are not obviously electron acceptors, being rather adducts of the proton (a true Lewis acid) and a base such as the acetate ion. They can only be brought logically into the Lewis scheme by appealing to the fact that the reaction between a proton acid, which may be designated as XH, and a base, denoted by B, passes through an intermediate hydrogen-bonded state, X-H…B (in which the dotted line indicates a hydrogen bond, a relatively weak secondary attractive force).

Numerous lengthy polemical exchanges have taken place regarding the relative merits of the Brønsted–Lowry and Lewis definitions. The difference is essentially one of nomenclature and has little scientific content. In the remainder of this article the term acid is used to denote a proton donor (following the Brønsted–Lowry terminology), whereas the term Lewis acid is employed exclusively to refer to electron-pair acceptors. This choice is based partly on the logical difficulties mentioned in the last paragraph and partly on the fact (see below Acid–base equilibria) that the quantitative description of acid–base reactions is much simpler when it is confined to proton acids. It also represents the commonest usage of the terms.

The definition of Lewis acids and bases in terms of the gain or loss of electrons should not be confused with the definition of oxidizing and reducing agents in similar terms. In oxidation–reduction reactions one or more electrons are transferred completely from the reducing agent to the oxidizing agent, whereas in a Lewis acid–base reaction an electron pair on the base is used to form a covalent link with the acid.

Certain other acid–base definitions have been based upon reactions occurring in specific solvent systems. For proton acids in amphoteric solvents these are equivalent to the Brønsted–Lowry definition. It is sometimes convenient to have general terms for the cation and anion derived from the solvent molecule by the addition and removal of a proton, respectively. The terms lyonium and lyate ions are occasionally used in this way. In water, the lyonium and lyate ions are H3O+ and OH; in ethanol, C2H5OH2+ and C2H5O; and in liquid ammonia, NH4+ and NH2. For a given solvent, an acid can then be defined as a substance that increases the lyonium ion concentration (and correspondingly decreases the lyate ion concentration), whereas a base increases the lyate ion concentration (and decreases the lyonium ion concentration). This kind of definition, to be sure, really does not add anything to the concept of acids and bases as proton donors and proton acceptors.

The idea that an acid is a solute that gives rise to cations characteristic of the solvent and that a base is a solute that gives rise to anions characteristic of the solvent has sometimes been extended to solvents where no protons are involved at all—for example, liquid sulfur dioxide, SO2. In this example, the solvent is supposed to ionize according to the equation 2SO2 ⇄ SO2+ + SO32−. Thionyl chloride, regarded as SO2+ + 2Cl, then can be considered an acid, and potassium sulfite, 2K+ + SO32−, can be considered a base. The species SO2+ and SO32− can certainly be regarded as Lewis acids and bases, but it is doubtful that they exist to any appreciable extent in liquid sulfur dioxide, a situation that makes the discussion somewhat artificial. Although this view of acids and bases has been useful in stimulating work in unusual types of solvent (for example, in carbonyl chloride, selenium oxychloride, antimony trichloride, and hydrogen cyanide), it has not met with general acceptance.

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