Question

Nitric acid is a component of acid rain that forms when gaseous nitrogen dioxide pollutant reacts with gaseous oxygen and liquid water to form aqueous nitric acid.

Write a balanced chemical equation for this reaction.

Express your answer as a chemical equation. Identify all of the phases in your answer


I put this 4HNO3

and I got this as a request

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What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The literature gives this as the reaction of NO2 gas with water vapor to form nitrous and nitric acids.
2NO2(g) + H2O(l) ==> HNO2(aq) + HNO3(aq)

However that doesn't show O2 as a reactant.
Another place I see that HNO3 decomposes to O2, NO2, and H2O and if we reverse that an balance it we get this.
4NO2(g) + O2)g) + 2H2O(l) ==> 4HNO3(aq)
which is about as close as I can come to it. There are numerous other reactions in the literature but none specifically with the reagents in the problem. I hope this helps.

Answer 2

thank you