What are the conjugate acid and base of H2PO4?

1 Answer
Aug 25, 2016

Simply add or substract a proton from H3PO4.

Explanation:

Phosphoric acid is the parent acid, i.e. H3PO4.

Remove a proton from this, we get, H2PO4 as the conjugate base. Or rather phosphoric acid donates a proton to water to give H3O+ and H2PO4.

And remove a proton from H2PO4 to get HPO24 as the conjugate base.

In water that's about as far as you go. But when we speak of conjugate acidity/basicity all we are doing is exchanging protons, H+ with the solvent. Mass and charge are conserved, as they must be.