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.
1. 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.
  1. 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.
    1. The overall products of catalytic cracking are alkanes of shorter chain lengths and small alkenes.
    2. 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.
1. 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.

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Production of Materials: Dot point 1

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	Created by super-fatboy over 11 years ago