Hello AN! I have an Electrochemical SAC coming up and I'm pretty anxious and need help with some questions I couldn't stop thinking about since my teacher is currently unavailable.
1. In fuel cells, do all the reactants supplied have to be 'fuels?'
2. What is the purpose of a semi-permeable membrane in a cell?
3. Are molten electrolytes more costly than aqueous electrolytes?
4. Would having porous electrodes for fuel cells allow the movement of anions to the anode and cations to the cathode?
5. What are the advantages to having a fuel cell that uses methanol?
6. If an electrolysis question said something like the following, "the electrolyte was an AgNO3 solution" and provided no other details, would we count that as an aqueous solution?
7. Is the anode always the same species as the reductant? And why?
8. What electrolyte is used in the production of aluminium?
9. If for example, we had HCl and its H+ ions were being reduced, would we say that the oxidant is HCl or H+?
10. Why would a theoretical current be lower than the experimental current?
Thank you!!!!!!!
I'm going to answer these very quickly without fact checking cuz I have my biochem finals tomorrow, so I apologise if any part of my answer is inaccurate.
1. Remember that you're supplying fuel to the anode, and oxygen is already in the air so you don't need to supply that
2. In electrolytic cells it separates the products at each electrode, in some electrolytic cells that produce fluorine gas, if the products come into contact, they will actually blow up.
3. Yes because you need to heat it and hence you need to pay for the fuel
4. Yes
5. It can potentially be renewable like bioethanol
6. The word "solution" implies an aqueous solution, so you can assume SLC ie 1M.
7. Yes, because oxidation always occur at the anode, and a reductant (or reducing agent) is always the species oxidised during a chemical reaction
8. Molten cryolite
9. Just H+, because the Cl- has dissociated from the H+ and remains in a -1 oxidation state
10. Resistance in wires, solution not at SLC, reaction not 100% efficient ie unreacted reactants or side reactions