Question

How much heat in kj is released by burning 9.5 grams of methane?

Answer 1

Methane is the compound CH4, and burning it uses the reaction:

CH4 + O2 -> CO2 + H2O, which is rather exothermic. To find the heat released by burning a certain amount of the substance, you should look at the bond enthalpy of each compound, and then compare the values before and after the reaction. In methane, there are 4 C-H bonds, which have bond energy of 416 kj/mol, resulting in a total bond energy of 1664 kj/mol. O2 is 494 kj/mol. Therefore we have a total of 2080 kj/mol on the left side. On the right side we have CO2, which has 2 C=O bonds, each at 799 kj/mol each, resulting in 1598 kj/mol, and H2O has 2 O-H bonds, at 459kj/mol each, resulting in a total of 2516 kj/mol on the right hand side. Now, this may be confusing because the left hand side seems to have less heat than the right, but you just need to remember: making minus breaking, which results in a total change of 436kj/mol heat evolved.

Now it is a simple matter of find the mols of CH4 reacted, using n=m/mr.

n = 9.5/16.042 = 0.592195 mol

Therefore, if we reacted 0.592195 mol, and we produced 436 kj for one mol, the total amount of energy evolved was 436*0.592195 kj, or 258.197 kj.