Wednesday 8 February 2017

Making marmalade: heat of solution for sucrose

I made my first successful marmalade yesterday. I became aware recently that the process of dissolving can have implications on the temperature of an aqueous solution. This is called the heat of solution and is in part linked to the breaking of bonds if an ionic compound dissolves. Sucrose is not ionic and doesn't dissociate but is endothermic on dissolving. When I add the sugar, the process of dissolving should lower the temperature. The molar mass of sucrose is 342 grams. I dissolved nearly 800 grams which is 2.3 moles. The heat of solution is 5.4 kJ per mole so it took in about 12 kJ. I was using 1700 ml of water so 1.7 kg. Using the specific heat capacity formula E=mcdeltaT, the decrease in temperature would be 12000/(4200*12) = 0.24 degrees Celsius. It wouldn't be noticeable. My sources were http://webserver.dmt.upm.es/~isidoro/dat1/Heat%20of%20solution%20data.pdf and https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20131019111912AAvjNHf