This practical report presents the molar enthalpy of combustion of several alcohols.
Alcohols
The most abundant form of organic compounds is alcohol, alcohol is formed by an OH- combining with a carbon atom. These compounds can be put into three groups, primary, secondary and tertiary the distinction for identifying which classification these compounds are, is dependent on the way the hydroxyl is covalently bonded with carbon. In primary one carbon is only bonded with another carbon, secondary has two bonds with carbon atoms. Correspondingly tertiary is bonded with three. (http://www.britannica.com/science/alcohol). The experiment uses normal or nomenclature alcohols which consist of a series, each individual alcohol has their own series/ chain.
…show more content…
Aldehydes replace "e" with "al", ketones add "one", amines add "amine" and carboxlyic acid replaces "e" with "oic acid". (video 3) This helps identify where a double bond is, every an alcohol strand is and by using prefixes we can tell how many carbons are in it.
For example: 4 carbons= a butane, but if it was double bonded an "e" is added to make butene, if it is triple bond it fornm butyne. (video
…show more content…
The two means of transport is exothermic and endothermic, an endothermic reaction absorbs all the surrounding energy (heat) therefore making it cooler. Whereas an exothermic reaction releases energy producing heat, all combustion reactions are an example of this. Combustion is where the surrounding oxygen in the air is used to burn "fuel". A by-product from this exothermic process is heat, for example: Carbon reacting with oxygen to form carbon dioxide and heat. (http://www.e-inst.com/combustion/) Heat of combustion however is the amount of energy spent and released as that heat, this energy of heat is measured in jealous (j) (http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/175059/). Each element has a unique heating value, a heating values is the energy when one unit of the element is completely combusted with the oxygen in the air. Which leads on to alcohols, each type of alcohol has a unique heat value caused by the difference in their