Question

When carbon is burned in air, it reacts with oxygen to form carbon dioxide. When 16.8g of carbon were burned in the presence of 59.9g of oxygen, 15.1g of oxygen remained unreacted. What mass of carbon dioxide was produced?

Answer 1

The balanced chemical reaction is written as:

C + O2 = CO2

We are given the amounts of the reactants to be used in the reaction. We use these values for calculations. Since there is oxygen that is left in the reaction then the limiting reactant would be carbon. We calculate as follows:

16.8 g C ( 1 mol / 12.01 g) ( 1 mol CO2 / 1 mol C ) ( 44.01 g / 1 mol) = 61.56 g CO2 produced