[joe955]

I'm trying to understand. When  reducing a substance  using an acid and red phosphorus, what determines which acid will do the reduction reaction correctly? Will any acid work for all reduction purposes? Also what is the true purpose of adding sodium to the reduced substance making the solution strongly acidic only to separate the reduced substance from the sodium that was just added. Why not bypass the sodium/extraction step, isn't the molecular structure of the original reduced substance the same as the reduced substance that was extracted from the sodium solution?

[joe955]

This question must have an unknown answer.

[joe955]

Well I don't know how possible this is but through a few different experiments using sodium hydroxide mixed with HCL, it seems to change the molecular structure of the HCL. So possibly mixing  sodium hydroxide  with hydriotic acid, a similar reaction will take place. And this reaction is needed in order to extract a liquid and a base compound from the hydriotic solution.

So basically the acid is needed to reduce but the reduced compound won't separate from the acid. So the the sodium hydroxide is added to react with the acid but not the compound. With the acid changed by the sodium, the reduced compound is able to now be extracted using a solvent. If this is wrong please don't hesitate to correct this theory for me.