Someone help me out here, Zeolites...

[SantasL.Helper]

Quote from my science book:


Whenever the Na+ ions in zeolite are being replaced by H+, zeolite will get acidic properties. This will make it useable as a katalyst, when for example esterificating an acid and an alcohol to an ester and water.


Can someone here explains how this process works (as in, a little more detailed)? Sounds rather interesting to me...

[vulture]

What makes something acidic? The presence of H+ ions. So, a zeolite that contains H+ ions will show acidic behaviour in H2O solution.

However, zeolites are often use the other way round. For example, Na+ saturated zeolite is brought into a solution containing Mg2+ and Ca2+ ions, 2 Na+ ions are exchanged for one Ca2+ or Mg2+ ion. This is widely used to prevent CaCO3 precipitating when boiling water.

[Anath]

This isn't a "Somebody please do my science homework" type post is it?

What in blazes is a "katalyst"??.

"esterificating" has a pretty flimsy case for being included in an English dictionary. Try Esterification or even Esterifying..

Using Google would have saved us all some time, Zeolite +Catalyst +Ester gets me over 1,000 hits.

[SantasL.Helper]

Hey Anath, how about you taking that broomstick out of your arse? I would with the bigest amount of joy capable of being collected in a human being like to see how very lovely you and your english would type a descent amount of dutch on a dutch forum site. Therefor stop flaming useless bullshit, start reading and learning and unless you got something usefull to say shut the fuck up.

No, this is not my homework. I was reading my science book (yes, indd in order to make my homework) and that part just crossed my eyes and it looked usefull.



Thanks for the reply vulture, i was aiming at how the zeolite works as a catalyst though, anyone capable of telling me?...

[megalomania]

Anath has got the right of it, do a damn search before asking these kinds of questions. A little legwork on your part could have gone a long way to answering your question.