Welcome to this course on Organic Chemistry. The topics covered in this course include crude oil - fuels, oils and other useful substrates. Also, the uses of plant oil. In this course, we will examine alkanes, alkenes and alcohols along with other topics.
Crude oil is the chemical that has been powered our civilisation for over a century now. Crude oil is a finite resource and a fossil fuel. These are two reasons why we must eventually find a replacement to our dependence on crude.
Fractional distillation is a method of separating crude oil into individual chemical compositions. Bitumen, kerosene and gasoline are examples of different fractions retrieved within the separation process.
Alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons. You will always know them as they end with '-ane'. Common examples that you will know are methane, propane and butane. Catalytic cracking is used as a process to recover alkanes.
These flashcards will help you understand many of the key terms involved in a discussion of organic chemistry. Hydrocarbons, petrochemicals, oil fractions, among them. Alkane formulae are also provided.
Let's take a few minutes to review. Here is a short quiz which quickly looks back on the sections that we have just covered. There are six short questions in true-or-false or multiple choice formats.
Combustion is defined as a chemical reaction whereby a substance - oil in this case - reacts with oxygen and produces light, heat and other substances. Combustion can be complete or incomplete. We look at hydrocarbon combustion.
When we burn fossil fuels on a mass scale, as in the use of automobiles or fossil fuel burning power plants, we release a vast amount of nitrous oxides and sulphur dioxides. They combine with water molecules in the atmosphere to form acid rain.
Take a few minutes to look over these flashcards. The terms and explanations here will help you in your review of combustion and related topics. How do we test for carbon dioxide? It will turn lime-water milky.
Let's have another short quiz. Here are five quick questions to test what you have learned so far, about the topic of combustion. What colour flame will complete combustion produce. Do you know?
As with the alkanes earlier, common alcohol belongs to a larger group of substances that end with '-anol'. Propanol. ethanol and methanol are a few examples. Alcohols, unlike oils, will dissolve in water.
Yet another group are the alkenes. These can be made from alkanes through the use of cracking. Alkenes are unsaturated hydrocarbons which have a double bond between two carbon atoms.
Polymers are substances consisting of long molecules made of of a number of smaller molecules that are joined together. Plastics are the most common type of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic polymers.
Oil does not only come from the earth, but are produced by living things as well. The oils of many plants, for instance, are used to produce a number of cooking and skincare products. Plant oils are usually healthier than animal oils.
