How many grams of carbon tetrachloride can be produced from reacting 709.0 grams of chlorine (Cl2) with excess methane?

Question

Carbon tetrachloride is a solvent which is used as a refrigerant and also as a cleaning agent. Today, methane and chlorine are mainly used to produce carbon tetrachloride:

 

CH₄ + 4Cl₂ → CCl₄ + 4HCl

 

How many grams of carbon tetrachloride can be produced from reacting 709.0 grams of chlorine (Cl₂) with excess methane?

Answer 1

Hello, Emily,

Thanks for adding the balanced equation.

CH₄ + 4Cl₂ → CCl₄ + 4HCl

It tells us we'll get 1 mole of CCl₄ for every 4 moles of Cl₂, assuming CH₄ is in excess. So let's determine how many moles of Cl₂ we have in 709.2 grams of the element by dividing by it's molar mass.

(709.2g)/(70.9 grams/mole) = 10.0 moles Cl₂ [Nice number - I like this problem already]

Now use the molar ratio of 4 to determine how many moles of CCl₄ we should expect:

(10.0 moles Cl₂)*(1 mole CCl_4/4 mole Cl₂) = 2.5 moles CCl₄

Multiply moles CCl₄ by its molar mass to get grams

2.5 moles CCl₄)*(153.8g/mole) = 384.5 g CCl₄

Bob