Neutralization Reaction

[Anna Turk 1D]

How do you know when an acid base reaction will produce water and when it will not?

[Reza Hemmati 3L]

Hi!

I'm pretty sure an acid-base neutralization always produces water*. It's not always written because the water produced is negligible compared to the relatively vast amount of water in the solutions being mixed in the neutralization.

*Acids donate H+ when they dissociate, which reacts with the OH- that bases either release when dissociating or take a H+ from water to produce. (The reaction between H+ and OH- to form H2O is strongly favored with Kw being so low, we'll learn more about this in 14B)

Hope this helps! ^^