Talk:Nitrous acid

That diagram of the structure of nitrous acid is wrong: the nitrogen has 10 electrons (even if it did somehow, it would not be sp2 hybridized as shown.

agreed
the diagram is wrong. the nitrogen is violating the octet rule. the nitrogen should only have two elctrons, not 4.

Some one put this in as its true. Nitrous acid will also cause cytosine to convert to uracil which will then pair with adenosine instead of the original guanine. Ie it causes genetic damage.

Decomposition
The article says "It rapidly decomposes into nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide and water when in solution: 2HNO2 → NO2 + NO + H2O It also decomposes into nitric acid and nitrous oxide and water: 4HNO2 → 2HNO3 + N2O + H2O"

I may be missing something, but how can it do both? And if that is in fact correct, in roughly what percentages does this occur? Kel - Ex-web.god 07:59, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

The actual reaction is 3HNO2 -> HNO3 + 2NO + H20. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.0.37.143 (talk) 12:32, 16 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Nitrogen dioxide dissolves in water to produce both nitric and nitrous acids. At more than trivial concentrations and at low pH, nitrous acid disproportionates into nitric acid and nitric oxide.  At high pH, the nitrous acid is stably captured as nitrite ion.  Reference provided. Norm Reitzel (talk) 15:08, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Atmospheric relevance
In my eyes, this section is written far to complexly, with far more technical terms then needed. Like one thing, what is ozone budget? A search of both Wikipedia and Google get nothing, and my best guess of what this would have to be is something dealing with Photochemical Smog. I really think this part needs a rewriting, since after a little digging, it seems this section hasn't changed a single word since it was written in the 23 February 2006 revision. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.108.169.38 (talk) 03:43, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Azinic acid is an incorrect systematic name for nitrous acid
The chemical formula of nitrous acid, HNO2, can also be written [NO(OH)]. Therefore its systematic name is hydroxidooxidonitrogen as explicitly mentioned in Table IX (p. 300 on paper, 312 in PDF file) in the Red Book 2005, aka.

It must not be confused with the azinic acid (dihydridohydroxidooxidonitrogen) whose formula is HNH2O2 = [NH2O(OH)] as explicitly mentioned in the IUPAC Red Book 2005, Inorganic acid and derivatives, Table IR-8.1 (p. 128 on paper, 140 in PDF file). This error introduced in the revision of 01:16, 27 July 2010 made by User:Plasmic Physics is now corrected. As far as I properly understand, azinic acid could be seen as an oxide of hydroxylamine, but I was not previously aware of the existence of such a compound. More explanation on azinic acid would be welcome. It seems that a bug present in an online plug-in of Chemaxon, a cheminformatics company, and on the site of chemical suppliers such as Molport could be responsible for the propagation of this erroneous systematic name. The same seems also to be the case with the name oxoazinic acid erroneously attributed as systematic name to nitric acid. Shinkolobwe (talk) 23:39, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Cis/Trans
Why does the article state that the molecule has a cis and trans form when these are isomers based on arrangement around a double bond. the central bond is a single bond therefore rotation is possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.251.252.154 (talk) 21:26, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Perhaps, the cis/trans forms are metasable states with appreciable energy barriers to interconversion, due to the electronegative oxygen attached directly to the nitrogen. The cis/trans isomers aren't really isomers so much as conformers, see Hydrogen peroxide for another example. Plasmic Physics (talk) 00:32, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

PDF generates a different set of references
When I generated the pdf, it contained a different set of references which didn't match the references listed on the web page. For example, in the Decomposition section, The following listed the reference as [2],

Nitrogen dioxide disproportionates into nitric acid and nitrous acid in aqueous solution:[2] 2 NO2 + H2O → HNO3 + HNO2

but the pdf generated a page with the reference listed as 13. One problem is, there is no reference 13.

Nitrogen dioxide disproportionates into nitric acid and nitrous acid in aqueous solution:[13] 2 NO2 + H2O → HNO3 + HNO2

The next problem I noticed was that instead of the 5 references on the web page, the pdf has 14 listed but 12 and 13 are missing.

I'll send an e-mail to wiki and see what happens. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.151.110.119 (talk) 12:59, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Where did the Potassium ion on the right side come from?
2 HNO2 + 6 H2O + 4 SO2 → 3 H2SO4 + K2SO4 + 2 NH2OH 190.93.26.49 (talk) 03:13, 15 October 2022 (UTC)