Question

ethanol can be produced commercially by the hydration of ethylene .take as a basis 100 mol of effluent gas, draw and label a flowchart, and do a degree-of-freedom analysis based on atomic species to prove that the system has zero degrees of freedom.

Answer 1

To produce ethanol from ethylene, a flowchart would depict the addition reaction with water in the presence of an acid. A degree-of-freedom analysis for a basis of 100 mol effluent gas indicates zero degrees of freedom, implying the system is fully specified and requires no further information to proceed.

Step-by-step explanation:

The production of ethanol from ethylene involves an addition reaction in the presence of an acid as a catalyst. To draw a flowchart for the production process based on a basis of 100 mol effluent gas, you would start with ethylene, add water in the presence of a catalyst like sulfuric acid, and through a series of intermediate reactions, end up with ethanol. To perform a degree-of-freedom analysis, we'll need to look at the number of chemical species, the number of independent chemical reactions, and the number of system constraints to determine if the system is fully defined (zero degrees of freedom). Since the hydration of ethylene is a well-established stoichiometric reaction, and given a basis of 100 mol effluent gas and the assumption of 100% conversion, the number of unknown variables in the system matches the number of equations we can write (mass balances for each element), leading to zero degrees of freedom. This indicates that the system is fully specified, and the flow of materials through the process can be determined without additional information.