11/4/13

ALEKS Andreas Hewitt - 11/04/2013 7:33:36 PM PST - Copyright 2013 UC Regents and ALEKS Corporation

Andreas Hewitt - 11/04/2013 7:33:36 PM PST

General Chemistry (First Quarter) / Au2013 CHEM120 – CHEM 120 A (11916) (Prof. Wiegand)
1.
Limiting reactants
Liquid hexane

will react with gaseous oxygen

and gaseous water

to produce gaseous carbon dioxide

. Suppose 5.17 g of hexane is mixed with 14. g of oxygen. Calculate the maximum mass of

carbon dioxide that could be produced by the chemical reaction. Be sure your answer has the correct number of significant
digits.

The question is a limiting reactant problem. You can tell it's a limiting reactant problem by the fact that you were given the initial
amounts of more than one reactant. Here is the balanced chemical equation for the reaction you will need to solve the problem:
(l)

(g)

(g)

(g)

You can solve limiting reactant problems in the following three steps:
Step 1 : Find the initial moles of each reactant.
Use the molar mass of each compound to convert mass to moles:
reactant

There are

initial mass

significant digits in the mass of

initial moles

and

significant digits in the mass of

, so

your calculated values for the initial moles have and significant digits, respectively. But keep two extra digits
for now, and only round your final answer to the correct number of significant digits.
Step 2 : Determine the limiting reactant.
The limiting reactant is the one that gets used up first. The most reliable way to find it is to consider each reactant
in turn, and imagine what would happen if that reactant were completely used up by the reaction. Only when you
pick the actual limiting reactant will your results be sensible.
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It is rare but possible for there to be more than one limiting reactant.
What happens in this case is that you will find sensible results when you
imagine more than one reactant to be the limiting reactant. What this means is
that the reaction runs out of more than one reactant simultaneously.
As you may imagine, it's a relatively rare thing for the amounts of several
reactants to be perfectly balanced, so that the reaction runs out of more than
one reactant simultaneously. There is no difficulty in dealing with reactions like
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11/4/13

ALEKS Andreas Hewitt - 11/04/2013 7:33:36 PM PST - Copyright 2013 UC Regents and ALEKS Corporation

this, however. Simply choose any one of the reactants that is exhausted to be
the limiting reactant.

Let's begin by imagining what would happen if the hexane were used up. The moles of
consumed would equal the moles of

that would be

consumed multiplied by the ratio of their stoichiometric

coefficients:
consumed
consumed
consumed
consumed

This would be the final situation:

reactant

initial moles

moles
consumed

final moles

?!
Clearly this is impossible! The reaction couldn't use up
of oxygen when there are only
to start with. It must be that the reaction would run out of oxygen before all the hexane were used up.
Just to be certain, however, let's imagine what would happen if all the oxygen were used up. The moles of
that would be consumed would equal the moles of
consumed multiplied by the ratio of their
stoichiometric coefficients:

consumed

consumed
consumed

consumed

This would be the final situation:

reactant

initial moles

moles
consumed

final moles

This result is indeed possible. That is, there's enough hexane to use up all the oxygen.
The limiting reagent is oxygen.
Step 3 : Find the final moles of each reactant.
Use the fact that oxygen is the limiting reagent:
reactant

initial moles

moles used up

final moles

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ALEKS Andreas Hewitt - 11/04/2013 7:33:36 PM PST - Copyright 2013 UC Regents and ALEKS Corporation

Step 4 : Answer the question.

You're asked for the maximum mass of carbon dioxide that could be produced, i.e. the mass of carbon dioxide
when the limiting reagent is used up.
First, calculate the number of moles of

produced from the number of moles of

consumed:

produced
consumed

produced
consumed

Next, convert moles to mass using the molar mass of carbon dioxide:

Since the moles of carbon dioxide produced has 2 significant digits, so should your answer.

Maximum mass of carbon dioxide produced :

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