Monday Reading Concepts

Monday Reading Concepts 

By Kelly Moran

With abundant oxygen gas and combustion, the burning of a hydrocarbon yield to Carbon dioxide, water, and thermal energy. Thermal energy is written as a product of the reaction because energy is released when a hydrocarbon burns. The combustion of a hydrocarbon is a highly exothermic reaction because whenever you burn something a new bond is formed and often contains more energy than the reactant. In order to calculate the amount of thermal energy, you must use the molar heat of combustion.  In a chemical equation the total thermal energy must correspond to the amounts of all other reactants and products involved. Because of this, the total thermal energy released will be twice that quantity released when one mole of ethane burns. Heats of combustion can also be expressed as the energy involved when one gram of hydrocarbon burns. This information is useful in finding out how much energy is released when a certain mass of fuel is burned. These are all the main concepts and terms I learned from section C.5!