Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Potassium bisulfate

RegularOldGuy - 28-9-2016 at 18:22

Hello everyone,

I have a large clump of potassium bisulfate left over from making some nitric acid (sulfuric acid + potassium nitrate), the byproduct from is supposed to be potassium bisulfate. I would like to use this in preparation of some pyruvic acid and was wondering, how can I clean things up by neutralizing any sulfuric acid that might be remaining while keeping the potassium bisulfate intact? Right now its a rock hard lump in the bottom of a beaker so I will at minimum need to redissolve it to get it out.

Thanks for any assistance!

Meltonium - 29-9-2016 at 03:12

Just washing the salt with cold water is probably your best bet to get the remaining acid out.

vmelkon - 4-10-2016 at 12:33

1. Neutralize the acid by adding K2CO3.
or
2. Dissolve and then recrystallize and wash the crystals

unionised - 4-10-2016 at 13:03

If it's a rock hard lump there probably isn't much excess acid there.

Recrystallisation from water will get rid of practically all the excess acid. Neutralising it with K2CO3 would destroy the bisulphate.
However treatment with K2SO4 would, in principle, convert the excess sulphuric acid to the desired product

chloric1 - 14-10-2024 at 16:15

My cake was a mixture of high melting and low melting solids. According to atomistry.com potassium bisulfate melts around 200 degrees C but there is a KHSO4-3H2SO4 adduct that has a melting point of 97C. I dissolved my cake in several hundred ml of water and I will recover what KHSO4 I can from fractional crystallization. Then I will take remaining liquid filtrate and split it exactly in half and neutralize one half with potassium bicarbonate and then recombine portions and boil to saturation.