[Aymeric]

Hello,

I’m not sure where this question best fits, sorry if this is the wrong sub-forum.

I’m a complete amateur and have very basic knowledge of chemistry. I would like to saturate a liquid solution consisting of almost only water, with sodium bicarbonate.
I have no idea how to go about calculating the maximum amount of sodium bicarbonate I can dissolve into this solution to saturation, without having too much residue clumping up at the bottom.

Thanks for your guidance!

PS. This is not homework, just a personal project.

[Corribus]

You can look up the solubility of sodium bicarbonate, although that relies on assumption of standardized conditions.  Better to just dissolve until saturation and then filter.

[Aymeric]

Thank you Corribus. I’ve tried adding a little less than the solubility (87 g/L, so I added 8g to a 100 mL solution), I mixed for several minutes at high speed, and a few hours later about half of the bicarbonate sodium is clumped up at the bottom of my vial 

[AWK]

It is not known why you need a saturated solution of NaHCO₃. But to obtain such a solution is quite a challenge. Typically, solutions are simply heated to speed up dissolution. In the case of sodium bicarbonate, this method is useless because already at 40°C the compound begins to slowly decompose thermally and around 80 degrees the decomposition is very fast. In addition, NaHCO₃ dissolves extremely slowly in water. The chemist should be patient. A week of intense mixing will probably be enough.

[Aymeric]

It is not known why you need a saturated solution of NaHCO₃. But to obtain such a solution is quite a challenge. Typically, solutions are simply heated to speed up dissolution. In the case of sodium bicarbonate, this method is useless because already at 40°C the compound begins to slowly decompose thermally and around 80 degrees the decomposition is very fast. In addition, NaHCO₃ dissolves extremely slowly in water. The chemist should be patient. A week of intense mixing will probably be enough.

Thank you for the pointers! I’ll just be patient then