Does carbon react to water?

Question

Also, how reaactive is it and is it inert?

Answer 1

Carbon does not react with water.

The most prominent oxide of carbon is carbon dioxide, CO2. This is a minor component of the Earth's atmosphere, produced and used by living things, and a common volatile elsewhere. In water it forms trace amounts of carbonic acid, H2CO3, but as most compounds with multiple single-bonded oxygens on a single carbon it is unstable. Through this intermediate, though, resonance-stabilized carbonate ions are produced. Some important minerals are carbonates, notably calcite. Carbon disulfide, CS2, is similar.

The other oxides are carbon monoxide, CO, the uncommon carbon suboxide, C3O2, the uncommon dicarbon monoxide, C2O and even carbon trioxide, CO3. Carbon monoxide is formed by incomplete combustion, and is a colorless, odorless gas. The molecules each contain a triple bond and are fairly polar, resulting in a tendency to bind permanently to hemoglobin molecules, displacing oxygen, which has a lower binding affinity. Cyanide, CN-, has a similar structure and behaves a lot like a halide ion; the nitride cyanogen, (CN)2, is related.

With reactive metals, such as tungsten, carbon forms either carbides, C-, or acetylides, C22- to form alloys with very high melting points. These anions are also associated with methane and acetylene, both very weak acids. All in all, with an electronegativity of 2.5, carbon prefers to form covalent bonds. A few carbides are covalent lattices, like carborundum, SiC, which resembles diamond.

Carbon chains

Carbon has the ability to form long chains with interconnecting C-C bonds. This property is called catenation. Carbon-carbon bonds are fairly strong, and abnormally stable. This property is important as it allows carbon to form a huge number of compounds; in fact, there are more known carbon-containing compounds than all the compounds of the other chemical elements combined.

The simplest form of an organic molecule is the hydrocarbon - a large family of organic molecules that, by definition, are composed of hydrogen atoms bonded to a chain of carbon atoms. Chain length, side chains and functional groups all affect the properties of organic molecules

Answer 2

Reaction Of Carbon

Answer 3

Carbon will react with water at high temperatures; the 'water gas' reaction is an example that is used to produce hydrogen gas from coal and steam. More information on 'water gas' can be found below.

At lower temperatures, neither water nor carbon are very reactive. Carbon-carbon bonds and hydrogen-oxygen bonds both have a high bond strength; those bonds need to be broken before a reaction can take place, and such bond-breaking does not happen easily at room temperature. Refer to the article below on 'activation energy' for more detail.

Answer 4

Under ordinary conditions, carbon is completely inert to water... eg it is used in water-purification systems.

That having been said, C DOES react with H2O under special conditions, eg in the preparation of a fuel ('water-gas', 'coal-gas', 'synthetic gas', etc). In these processes superheated steam is passed through carbon (coal, coke, etc) @>700 degrees to give a mixture of H2, CO and CO2 used in illuminating gas.

Answer 5

6 carbon 6 water and a bunch of energy will yield sugar but not without that large amount of energy!

Answer 6

No, it isn't very reactive to water.

Answer 7

no. it won react with water.

Answer 8

it does not react to water....