Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Production of Materials: Dot point 1
- 1.1: Construct word and balanced formulae equations of
chemical reactions as you encounter them.
- 1.2: Identify the industrial source of ethylene from the cracking of
some of the fractions from the refining of petroleum.
- Petroleum is a mix of hydrocarbons which undergoes fractional
distillation in order to retrieve products of high and low economic
value. Some fractions which consists of large molecules can be
broken down into smaller products. This process is called catalytic
cracking and one important product of this process is ethylene or
ethene.
- Catalytic Cracking: The process in which high molecular
weight (high boiling point) fractions from crude oil are broken
into lower molecular weight (lower boiling point) substances
in order to increase the output of high0demand products.
- The overall products of catalytic cracking are
alkanes of shorter chain lengths and small
alkenes.
- Uses zeolites as catalysts. They are crystalline
aluminosilicates (compounds of aluminium, silicon and
oxygen with some metal ions attached.
- 1.3: Identify that ethylene, because of the high
reactivity of its double bond, is readily transformed into
many useful products.
- The presence of the double bonds in alkenes make
them much more reactive than alkanes. Due to its high
reactivity, ethylene can be easily transformed into a
range of very useful products such as ethanol and the
starting materials for several important plastics.
- 1.4: Identify that ethylene serves as a monomer from
which polymers are made.