Peter M. answered • 05/06/21
Chemistry PhD Student with M.S. Tutoring for Over 5 Years!
The chemical formula for butane is C4H10 (58.12 g/mol). This is a combustion reaction. The balanced chemical equation is:
2 C4H10 + 13 O2 ---> 8 CO2 + 10 H2O
Now, we have to do some stoichiometric calculations.
100 g C4H10 * (1 mol C4H10 / 58.12 g C4H10) * (13 mol O2 / 2 mol C4H10) * (32 g O2 / 1 mol O2) = 357.88 g O2
The first step converts the grams of butane into moles of butane by dividing by the molar mass of butane.. Then, we can use the mole ratio from the coefficients in the balanced chemical equation in order to convert between species in the chemical reaction. Notice the coefficient in front of O2 is 13 and the coefficient in front of C4H10 is 2. Then, the final step is to convert the moles of O2 to grams of O2 by multiplying by the molar mass.
