Inorganic and Applied Chemistry

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Inorganic and Applied Chemistry

6.1.2 Methods for balancing redox reactions

One thing is to determine levels of oxidation for single compounds but to be able to use the levels of
oxidation in practice it is necessary to balance a redox-equation. The Redox reactions are often complicated
and it is thereby necessary to achieve a certain routine in matching such redox equations. We first look
briefly at the following redox-reaction which has to be balanced:

Ce4+(aq) + Sn2+(aq)  Ce3+(aq) + Sn4+(aq)

This reaction may be divided into the following half-reactions where the first gives the reduction and the last
half-reaction gives the oxidation:

Ce4+(aq)  Ce3+(aq) (reduction)

Sn2+(aq)  Sn4+(aq) (oxidation)

The principle in the work of progress is to balance the two half-reactions separately and add them together in
order to achieve the balanced overall reaction. This we will look into in the following example:

Electrochemistry

2009

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