Reagents

At the start of your experimental work always check that the appropriate reagents are readily available (a list of commonly used reagents is given in Table 19.1). Note that it is essential to use distilled water in all qualitative analysis. Tap water contains ions such as Ca^{2 +}, Mg^{2 +}, Fe^{2 +}, Fe^{3 +}, SO^2-₄ and Cl^- and its use could lead to 'false-positive' results.

Table 19.1 Typical reagents for qualitative analysis