/tg/Station 13

Oil is an acidic chemical (ph 4) that consumes H+ ions. If it is acidic, shouldn't it release H+ ions instead of consuming them? Are there any real life chemicals that behave like this?

It eats them.

like pac-man

H+ consuming means that the reaction rips off hydrogen atoms from other chemicals, making the solution more basic, doesn't mean it has to be a base

So to simplify down a fairly complex chemical theory (mostly by entirely disregarding it): yes, there are acidic molecules that can act as bases in certain circumstances, and vice versa- it's known as amphoterism, and the main reason is just that the technical chemist's definition of acids and bases are a bit different to the layman's. (For a more indepth look, here's the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphoterism, I'd single out the example of hydrogen sulfate being a good one for the case of "acidic (<7 on the pH scale) compound, basic tendencies").

As for that applying to ingame oil, that one is a bit more confusing. Can't think of any real world hydrocarbons that would do that myself, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

spessmanturtle wrote: ↑Tue Aug 16, 2022 7:19 pm Oil is an acidic chemical (ph 4) that consumes H+ ions. If it is acidic, shouldn't it release H+ ions instead of consuming them? Are there any real life chemicals that behave like this?

Only about every acid and base in existence. Acids and bases have something called a pKa/pKb and are constantly in balance with themselves. When acetic acid deprotonates (donates it’s proton/H+), it will gravitate it’s pH to about what it’s pKa is, which is about a 50% of acetic acid and 50% conjugate base (conjugate base being the deprotonated acetic acid). Add HCl for example, it’ll protonate more of the solution and the acetic acid, giving you a lower pH and an acetic acid distribution more like 60% acetic acid to 40% conjugate base. So now the acetic acid is actually raising the pH (or rather, making it lower more slowly). If you added acetic acid to an extremely strong acid, pH will rise (and probably boil because that shits exothermic).

This is also kind of the buffer principle, if I added 1 mole of HCl to 1L of the acetic acid solution, the pH wont be 0 because it will be reacting with the conjugate base of acetic acid. There’s also dilution, because if you add more volume with a higher pH, the overal pH will rise, even if both are acids.

And yes oil could increase the pH because there’s actually a lot of extremely basic hydrocarbons (see alkenes, strong reductants), but generally it’s acidid due to contaminants like sulfuric acid.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugate ... se_theory) is a good read if you’re interested)