Organic Chemistry

• What is the difference in the environmental impact of polyesters and regular addition polymers (plastics)?

  Polyesters are typically biodegradable whereas plastics (excluding: bioplastics) are not.
• A square/rectangle in condensation polymerisation represents the rest of the monomer that is ignored in favour of drawing only the functional groups.
• How do you name esters?

  First is the alcohol ending in -yl, and then second is the carboxylic acid ending in -oate
• The two primary uses of Esters is Food flavouring and Perfumes, this is due to their typically pleasant smell. Additionally esters evaporate easily.
• You get esters by combining carboxylic acids with alcohols.
• Are carboxylic acids weak or strong acids?

  They are weak acids as they do not typically fully ionize, this is why an equilibrium arrow is used to represent their reactions
• You make carboxylic acids by adding an oxidising agent to alcohol.
• -COOH is the functional group of carboxylic acids
• What does the 1 in but-1-ene represent?

  The location/position of the functional group (the carbon double bond)
• What does the 3 in 3-methyl-hexane stand for?

  The position of the methyl side-chain counted from the side it is closest to.
• You always count from the side with the least added value combined, for example if you count from the left and the methyl group's would be in position 2,6 but from the right would be in the position 2,5, you count from the right. it would therefore be 2,5-methyl
• What are the products of anaerobic respiration of yeast?

  Ethanol and Carbon Dioxide
• What are the 3 primary uses of ethanol?

  1. Alcoholic beverages
  2. Chemical Feedstock
  3. Biofuel/burnt for fuel
• What are the two primary uses of alcohol?

  1. Flammable - fuels
  2. Dissolve things water can't --> industrial solvent
• Hydrocarbons and lipid compounds are things alcohol can dissolve but water can't.
• Conditions for making ethanol:

  1. Temperature of around 300ºC.
  2. Pressure of 60 – 70 atm. 
  3. Concentrated phosphoric acid catalyst.
• Feedstock is raw materials used to provide reactants for reaction.
• Steps of fractional distillation:

  1. heated in chamber till it almost all becomes gas
  2. move into fractionating column
  3. hot gas moves up
  4. fractionating column is hot at the bottom and cool at the top
  5. condenses above its boiling point
  6. collected in tray
• alkanes that have a carbon chain length greater than four are liquids at room temperature.
• Order of Crude Oil:

  1. Refinery gases
  2. Petrol
  3. Kerosene
  4. Diesel
  5. Fuel Oil
  6. Bitumen
• In catalytic cracking you use either aluminium oxide or (alica or silica ? unsure)
• In catalytic cracking you first vaporize the hydrocarbon, and then collisions with the catalyst cause it to crack.
• In steam cracking you vaporize the hydrocarbon and mix it with steam at high temperatures.
• Carbon monoxide + soot is produced during incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons.
• Soot is carbon particulates.
• Soot causes smog which causes global dimming and respiratory problems
• Catalytic cracking breaks covalent bonds in the molecules as they come into contact with the surface of the catalyst, causing thermal decomposition reactions.