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Topic: Explosive levels of gases and vapors  (Read 10105 times)

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Offline gregpawin

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Explosive levels of gases and vapors
« on: July 27, 2004, 04:50:15 PM »
Since the thought of explosions are not far from the mind of chemists, Matheson has a nice table of lower explosive limits where the the gas is too lean to burn and upper limits where the mixture is too rich to burn.

http://www.matheson-trigas.com/mathportal/_pdfs/products/Lower%20(LEL)%20&%20Upper%20(UEL)%20Explosive%20Limits%20.pdf
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Corvettaholic

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Re:Explosive levels of gases and vapors
« Reply #1 on: July 27, 2004, 05:35:31 PM »
carbon monoxide can combust?

Offline gregpawin

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Re:Explosive levels of gases and vapors
« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2004, 07:32:09 PM »
I would certainly think so; its the product of an incomplete combustion reaction.  Perhaps its a intermediate of CO2 that doesn't get that extra oxygen that it needed.
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Corvettaholic

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Re:Explosive levels of gases and vapors
« Reply #3 on: July 28, 2004, 02:36:52 PM »
So if you had carbon monoxide, the oxygen atom would have a full valence, but the carbon would be missing 2 electrons. So if you had another oxygen atom present, would the reaction happen by itself, or would you need activation energy? While i'm at it, I suppose it doesn't necessarily have to be an oxygen atom to fill the void, could I stuff two hydrogen atoms in there and get H2CO or something like that? What would that be called and is it even possible?

Offline gregpawin

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Re:Explosive levels of gases and vapors
« Reply #4 on: July 28, 2004, 03:41:27 PM »
Figuring out the exact configuration of bonds on CO had me unsure too so here's what Wikipedia has on carbon monoxide which mentions that its best explained by molecular orbital theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide

I would think it does need activation energy since if it didn't, it wouldn't be stable otherwise.  I don't think you can stuff a couple of hydrogens in there because in that kind of environment they're more likely to be turned into water, in combustion anyways.
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