Sodium hypobromite is the
inorganic compound
In chemistry, an inorganic compound is typically a chemical compound that lacks carbon–hydrogen bonds, that is, a compound that is not an organic compound. The study of inorganic compounds is a subfield of chemistry known as '' inorganic chemist ...
with the formula NaBrO. It is usually obtained as the
pentahydrate
In chemistry, a hydrate is a substance that contains water or its constituent elements. The chemical state of the water varies widely between different classes of hydrates, some of which were so labeled before their chemical structure was underst ...
, so the material that is usually called sodium hypobromite has the formula NaOBr • 5H
2O. It is a yellow-orange solid that is soluble in water. It adopts a
monoclinic crystal structure with a Br–O bond length of 1.820 Å.
It is the
Na+ salt of
OBr−. It is the bromine analogue of
sodium hypochlorite, the active ingredient in common
bleach
Bleach is the generic name for any chemical product that is used industrially or domestically to remove color (whitening) from a fabric or fiber or to clean or to remove stains in a process called bleaching. It often refers specifically, to ...
. In practice the salt is usually encountered as an aqueous solution.
Sodium hypobromite arises by treatment of aqueous solution of bromine with base:
:Br
2 + 2NaOH → NaBr + NaBrO + H
2O
It can be prepared ''in situ'' for use as a
reagent
In chemistry, a reagent ( ) or analytical reagent is a substance or compound added to a system to cause a chemical reaction, or test if one occurs. The terms ''reactant'' and ''reagent'' are often used interchangeably, but reactant specifies a ...
, such as in the synthesis of
3-aminopyridine from
nicotinamide (
Hofmann rearrangement).
:
References
{{Sodium compounds
Hypobromites
Sodium compounds