Sodium is one of the highly used chemical elements is chemistry. Its an alkali metal that does not naturally occur in nature and has to be prepared from different kinds of compounds. The most common compounds of Sodium include sodium chloride, also known as common salt, sodium amide, and sodium hydride, etc.
Sodium is generally used in a lot of application, few of them include sodium ions that are commonly found in nerve cells of a human body. They help regulate water flow throughout the membranes. They are also essential for transporting sugar and amino acids to human cells.
What are the important compounds of Sodium?
Sodium Carbonate
You might commonly know this compound as washing soda. The most common way to synthesize sodium carbonate is with the help of the Solvay process. This process is commonly used to obtain sodium carbonate from different materials such as limestone, ammonia, and brine.
This process is commonly used in industries to produce sodium carbonate. Since it uses raw material that can be obtained with inexpensive methods, this process is economically significant. The benefit of this process is that the carbon dioxide generated in the process can be recycled to obtain more NaHCO3 or sodium bicarbonate, which is a monosodium salt of carbonic acid. This is commonly known as baking soda.
If you heat sodium carbonate decahydrate, it will yield sodium carbonate monohydrate which can be further heated to obtain sodium carbonate without the water. Sodium carbonate is known to be highly soluble in water
This compound is mostly used for softening and cleaning purposes in general. It is also one of the common products to manufacture glass, soap, and caustic soda. Sodium carbonate is also used in textile industries and remains an important addition to laboratory experiments.
Sodium Chloride
Most of the people recognize this as Salt. It originates from seawater which can be evaporated to create sodium chloride compound. Further, when crystallized by brine solution other chemicals such as sodium sulfate, calcium sulfate, and magnesium chloride, you will be able to obtain crude sodium chloride. Then this crude salt can be dissolved in water and filtered, which removes impurities, and you are left with pure sodium chloride.
Sodium chloride is commonly used as salt in most of the houses. It can also be used for the preparation of sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate.
Sodium Hydroxide
Commonly known to the general public as caustic soda, sodium hydroxide is formed with the help of the Castner-Kellner cell process. This is a method that includes electrolysis of chloride solution to produce alkali hydroxide.
In this case, when sodium chloride is electrolyzed, you are left with sodium hydroxide. In general, sodium hydroxide is soluble in water and has a white color. When reacted with carbon dioxide or CO2 it results in the formation of sodium carbonate or NA2CO3.
This is commonly used for preparing soap and paper. In some cases, it can also be used to prepare artificial silk. In some industries, it is used for petroleum refining and precipitating agent in labs.
Sodium Amide
Commonly known as sodamide, sodium amide is an inorganic compound of sodium that is composed of cations and anions of sodium and azanide respectively. Sodium amide is extremely reactive with water and should be avoided if not handled with expertise.
It is white in nature but is commercially found as gray colored due to the presence of iron from its manufacturing process in the industries. Sodium amide is used as a strong base with liquid ammonia solutions and it can function as a nucleophile.
