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I know that all chemical equations must be balanced for example C2H5OH+ 25 O2==> 16 CO2+ 18 H2O but suppose i m doing an expirement and i put ONLY one mole of C2H5OH+ one mole ofO2 what would i get as products? is there would be any reaction?

2007-09-22 07:54:06 · 2 answers · asked by zoozy 1 in Science & Mathematics Chemistry

2 answers

You are claiming C2H5OH + 25O2 => 16 CO2 + 18 H2O is balanced???? Not. Not even close.
So, if you "put" one mole of ethanol plus one mole of (molecular) oxygen what would you get....
Do you understand that a mole is a huge number? (In this case a huge number of molecules).
There are amost an infinite number of answers to your "question". I put 'question' in quotes since you actually failed to ask one with any meaning - unless I slept thru the class where "putting this plus that " was explained....
Oh yur ko-rekt, I'm bean a pain. I'm a real old timer who expects people asking for answers will spend enuf time to actually take some care to say what they mean and a little thought too. Slop is for the pigs. I digress.
Now. what could I do if I wanted with a mole of Oxygen and a mole of ethanol? I could make a plastic, I could make a sugar, an ester, an acid, a hydrocarbon, a furan, oh the places I could go. You probably mean "what would happen if I mixed a mole of ethyl alcohol with a mole of oxygen (diatomic)?" Answer (at STP): nothing. (assuming no enzymes or catalysts present). I drink ethyl alcohol and water solutions while breathing oxygen all the time, I can tell you they are stable together. Thermodynamically, we know that CO2 is more stable than EtOH and O2 so we could expect that as much CO2 as possible would eventually form (eventually being millions or billions of years) How much would that be? Well one mole of O2 will only react with half of the carbon present to make one mole of CO2 leaving a mole of OH 5 moles of H and a mole of C. We can see right away that we can make a mole of HOH or a mole of CO (carbon monoxide) or half a mole of CO2 but only one of those will be "most energetically favored" and I don't know which! Time to pull out the enthalpy tables...
We generally burn organics is an excess of Oxygen or we will have "reducing conditions". In reducing conditions we will create things like carbon monoxide, water and partially oxidized compounds. We can even make polymers. Soot is from a organic rich (oxygen poor) flame.
So there are two good answers to the question what happens if I "react" one mole of EtOH and one of O2?
Answer number one is to calculate the most stable (most energetically favorable) groupings of atoms which will "theoretically" form (after possibly infinite time). There will probably be multiple compounds present and likely some EtOH remaining.
Answer number two is to admit that what we get will depend bery sensitively on exactly how we do the reaction. Temperature, gas phase or in solution, in a glass vessle or metal. Catalysts (or light) persent? Pressure, etc etc,reagents (acids or bases - note that glass can have an alkaline surface and metals may have catalytic surfaces).
There would be no reaction without some energy to "start" the reaction. So the colder the mixture the longer it would take for anything to happen.
I think (I'm guessing) that we'd get part of a mole of CO2, part of a mole of CO, part of a mole of H2O, have some EtOH remaining and some "other stuff" like (CH3CH2)2O
{diethyl ether} and CH3CO(OH) {acetic acid}. Depends on exactly how we did the reaction.

2007-09-22 08:39:49 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

The true equation is C2H5OH + 3O2 ----> 2CO2 + 3H2O

If you forced there to be only one O2 molecule instead of three, this encourages incomplete combustion, which produces the toxic cas CO, as well as carbon (soot).

2007-09-22 15:00:29 · answer #2 · answered by Gervald F 7 · 0 0

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