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The Nature and Applications of Alkanes

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ivan chen

The physical nature

The physical properties of a compound mainly refer to its color, odor, specific gravity, melting point, boiling point, and solubility.

The common properties of alkanes are: lighter than water, capable of burning, and almost insoluble in water. This qualitative regulation is precisely because they are composed of carbon and hydrogen elements and have a certain proportion in quantity. On the other hand, since the absolute number of carbon and hydrogen atoms in each compound is different, they show their own characteristics. This is the quantitative change caused part of the qualitative change. If methane is a gas, it will condense into liquid when it is cooled to minus 161.6°C, and ethane with one more carbon atom and two hydrogen atoms will become liquid when cooled to minus 88.6°C. Its liquefaction temperature is lower than the methane, which is more than seventy degrees higher. Butane liquefies as long as it is cooled to about 0°C. If the number of carbon and hydrogen atoms continues to increase, when compounds contain 5-11 carbon atoms, they become the main components of gasoline; compounds containing 10-17 carbon atoms are kerosene components; diesel and lubricating oil components are Compounds containing 16 to 20 carbon atoms; compounds with more than 20 carbon atoms are collectively called paraffin, and they are all solid under normal conditions. It can be seen from this that "this quantitative change in the molecular formula causes the formation of a qualitatively different object each time."

The example of alkanes proves that the quality and quantity of things are not completely unrelated to each other, but are closely and intrinsically connected. It also clearly explained to us that there is a basic law that runs through everything that a quantitative change will inevitably cause a qualitative change.

In addition, alkanes can dissolve each other because of their similar structures. From the perspective of oil composition, although there are gas and solid alkanes inside, the oil is in a liquid state from the appearance, which is why.

The chemical nature

Because alkanes and methane have similar internal structures, their chemical properties are the same as methane. On the one hand, they exhibit stability. For example, alkanes do not interact with strong acids, strong bases, and strong oxidants at room temperature. Therefore, people are in production and scientific experiments. Among them, some alkane mixtures such as petroleum ether, paraffin oil, etc. are commonly used as solvents. These solvents are called inert solvents because they are not easy to interact with solutes and reaction products. On the other hand, it also shows reactivity under special conditions. For example, under high temperature, high pressure or under the action of catalysts, a series of chemical reactions can occur in alkanes. These reactions are our theoretical basis for chemical processing and utilization of petroleum and petroleum products.

(1) Oxidation and combustion

Alkanes can be oxidized by air at high temperatures to generate carbon dioxide and water, and release a lot of heat. This is the reason why gasoline, kerosene, and diesel have become important fuels for internal combustion engines.

If lower alkanes such as propane and butane are partially oxidized in the presence of high temperature, high pressure and appropriate catalysts, many oxygen-containing organic compounds such as formaldehyde, methanol, acetaldehyde, acetic acid, acetone, etc. can be obtained, all of which are important chemical raw materials . Industrially, paraffin waxes (higher alkanes containing C20H42~C30H62) obtained from petroleum processing are partially oxidized with air in the presence of potassium permanganate catalyst to obtain higher fatty acids:

Paraffin + O2 → (KMnO4, heating, pressurizing) higher fatty acid + H2O

Higher fatty acids are important raw materials for making soap and emulsifiers, and soap can be obtained from petroleum through this reaction. Therefore, the development of the petroleum industry can also save a large amount of animal and plant edible oils for soap making.

(2) Cracking reaction

Methane can be cracked at a temperature above 1000°C, while alkanes can generally undergo cracking reaction at 400-500°C. This is because as the molecular weight of the alkane increases and the carbon chain grows, the greater the chance of the C-C bond fracture, the worse the stability to heat. Since cracking can occur between the C-H bond and the C-C bond, the product after the reaction is very complicated. For example, after cracking of hexadecane (C16H34), alkane containing 1 to 14 carbon atoms may be produced, containing 2 to Alkenes with 15 carbon atoms are also produced by carbon, hydrogen, benzene, toluene, xylene and cycloalkanes. At the same time, during the cracking process, there may be small molecules of hydrocarbons that combine with each other to produce much larger molecules than hexadecane. Substances (such as cracked tar). Therefore, it cannot be represented by a simple chemical formula. Although the cracking reaction of alkanes is complicated, it can be recognized. As long as we strictly control the temperature, pressure, catalyst and reaction time during cracking, we can get some products with higher yields that we need.

Cracking reaction is very important in petroleum processing and petrochemical industry. Using this reaction can not only increase gasoline production and improve gasoline quality in a large amount, but also turn higher alkanes into lower olefins, providing us with more basic organic chemical raw materials.

(3) Halogenation reaction

Under the irradiation of heat or scattered light, alkane is like methane. The hydrogen atoms in the molecule can be replaced by halogens to produce a variety of different halogenated compounds. Industrially, some higher alkanes such as dodecane are chlorinated to obtain chlorododecane (C12H25Cl), which is an important raw material for the manufacture of synthetic detergents (soap powder).

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