What is your limiting reactant if 32 grams of CH4 reacts with 32 grams of oxygen gas?
1 Answer
Oxygen is our limiting reactant.
Explanation:
We must start by creating a balanced reaction between Methane and Oxygen. As methane is a hydrocarbon reacting with oxygen this will be a combustion reaction resulting in carbon dioxide and water.
The combustion reaction is:
Now we want to find how many moles of each reactant we have to find which one is limiting.
If we do a rough calculation for finding how many moles of
Using the molarity equation:
M=molar mass of the compound/element,
m=mass in grams of the compound/element
n=number of moles of the compound/element
n(Oxygen)=
n(methane)=
However, in the reaction equation, we need 2 moles of oxygen for every one mole of Methane, and we only have 1 mole of oxygen and 2 moles of Methane. That means methane is in excess and oxygen is thus our limiting reactant.
So in this reaction we would only be able to react 1 mol of