Eli5: How come some homemade cleaning solutions call for a mixture of an acid (vinegar or lime juice) and a base (baking soda)? Doesn’t that turn into water and salt?

Question

Are they just fooling solutions?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

Cleaning chemicals can be quite strong chemicals and you should not mix them unless you know the chemistry behind this. It is very easy to accidentally make toxic gas or fire by mixing the wrong chemicals. You are right about mixing base and acids. But the chemical reaction between these is often quite energetic and can produce other gases such as hydrogen gas. And this is probably what the home made solutions is trying to do. The heat will certainly help dissolve things. This is how many drain cleaners work. But you should be careful about this as it is possible to get things too hot and damage it and possibly set it on fire.