Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Yield
Yield
Yield
com/2011/05/pr
eliminary-heat-exchanger-design.html
A reaction with five hot dogs and four hot dog buns reacting to give four
complete hot dogs and one leftover hot dog. The hot dog buns are the limiting
reagent, and the leftover single hot dog is the excess reagent. The four
complete hot dogs are the theoretical yield.
Assuming the hot dogs and buns combine in a one-to-one ratio, we will be
limited by the number of hot dog buns we have since we will run out of buns
first. In this less than ideal situation, we would call the hot dog buns
the limiting reagent or limiting reactant.
METHOD 1: The first method is to calculate the actual molar ratio of the
reactants, and then compare the actual ratio to the stoichiometric ratio from
the balanced reaction.
\text{Actual ratio}=\dfrac{\text{moles of Al}}{\text{moles of
Cl}}_2=\dfrac{1.04 \times 10^{-1}\,\text {mol Al}}{5.99 \times
10^{-2} \,\text {mol Cl}_2}=\dfrac{1.74 \,\text{mol
Al}}{\text{1 mol Cl}_2}Actual ratio=moles of Clmoles of Al2=
5.99102mol Cl21.04101mol Al=1 mol Cl21.74mol AlA, c, t,
u, a, l, space, r, a, t, i, o, equals, start fraction, m, o, l, e, s, space, o, f, space,
A, l, divided by, m, o, l, e, s, space, o, f, space, C, l, end fraction, start
subscript, 2, end subscript, equals, start fraction, 1, point, 04, times, 10, start
superscript, minus, 1, end superscript, space, m, o, l, space, A, l, divided by,
5, point, 99, times, 10, start superscript, minus, 2, end superscript, space, m,
o, l, space, C, l, start subscript, 2, end subscript, end fraction, equals, start
fraction, 1, point, 74, space, m, o, l, space, A, l, divided by, 1, space, m, o, l,
space, C, l, start subscript, 2, end subscript, end fraction
The actual ratio tells us that we have 1.74 mol of \text{Al}AlA, l for every
1 mol of \text{Cl}_2Cl2C, l, start subscript, 2, end subscript. In
comparison, the stoichiometric ratio from our balanced reaction is below:
\text{Stoichiometric ratio}=\dfrac{2 \,\text{mol Al}}{3 \,\text
{mol Cl}_2}=\dfrac{0.67 \,\text{mol Al}}{1\,\text{mol
Cl}_2}Stoichiometric ratio=3mol Cl22mol Al=1mol Cl2
0.67mol AlS, t, o, i, c, h, i, o, m, e, t, r, i, c, space, r, a, t, i, o, equals, start
fraction, 2, space, m, o, l, space, A, l, divided by, 3, space, m, o, l, space, C, l,
start subscript, 2, end subscript, end fraction, equals, start fraction, 0, point,
67, space, m, o, l, space, A, l, divided by, 1, space, m, o, l, space, C, l, start
subscript, 2, end subscript, end fraction
This means we need at least 0.67 moles of \text{Al}AlA, l for every mole
of \text{Cl}_2Cl2C, l, start subscript, 2, end subscript. Since our actual
ratio is greater than our stoichiometric ratio, we have more \text{Al}AlA,
l than we need to react with each mole of \text{Cl}_2Cl2C, l, start
subscript, 2, end subscript. Therefore, \text{Cl}_2Cl2C, l, start subscript,
2, end subscript is our limiting reagent and \text{Al}AlA, l is in excess.
METHOD 2: A more guess-and-check way you can figure out the limiting
reactant is by picking one of the reactantsit doesnt matter which oneand
pretending that it is the limiting reagent. We can then calculate the moles of
the other reagent needed based on the moles of our pretend limiting reagent.
For example, if we pretend that \text {Al}AlA, l is the limiting reagent, we
would calculate the required amount of \text{Cl}_2Cl2C, l, start subscript,
2, end subscript as follows:
moles of Cl2=1.04101mol Al3mol Cl22mol Al=1.56101mol
Cl2
Based on this calculation, we would need 1.56\times 10^{-
1}\,\text{mol Cl}_21.56101mol Cl21, point, 56, times, 10, start
superscript, minus, 1, end superscript, space, m, o, l, space, C, l, start
subscript, 2, end subscript if \text{Al}AlA, l is actually the limiting
reagent. Since we have 5.99 \times 10^{-2} \,\text {mol
Cl}_25.99102mol Cl25, point, 99, times, 10, start superscript, minus,
2, end superscript, space, m, o, l, space, C, l, start subscript, 2, end subscript,
which is less than 1.56\times 10^{-1}\,\text{mol Cl}_21.56101
mol Cl21, point, 56, times, 10, start superscript, minus, 1, end superscript,
space, m, o, l, space, C, l, start subscript, 2, end subscript, our calculation
tells us that we would run out of \text {Cl}_2Cl2C, l, start subscript, 2, end
subscript before we fully reacted all of the \text{Al}AlA, l.
Therefore, \text{Cl}_2Cl2C, l, start subscript, 2, end subscript is our
limiting reagent.
We can use the above relationship to set up ratios to convert the moles of
each reactant to moles of reaction:
We can use the moles of limiting reagent plus the stoichiometric ratios from
our balanced reaction to calculate the theoretical yield. The coefficients from
the balanced reaction tell us that for every 3 mol of \text{Cl}_2Cl2C, l,
start subscript, 2, end subscript, we should make 2 mol
of \text{AlCl}_3AlCl3A, l, C, l, start subscript, 3, end subscript.
Therefore, the theoretical yield, in moles, is
Percent yield
The theoretical yield is the maximum amount of product you would expect
from a reaction based on the amount of limiting reagent. In practice,
however, chemists dont always obtain the maximum yield for many reasons.
When running a reaction in the lab, loss of product often occurs during
purification or isolation steps. You might even decide it is worth losing 10%
of your product during an extra purification step because it is more important
to have extremely pure productas opposed to having a larger amount of
less pure product.
Burgler cat with stripes and eye mask holding a stolen hot dog bun.
Oh no, a cat-burglar stole a hot dog bun! That makes the actual yield three complete hot dogs. If our theoretical
yield was four complete hot dogs, what is our percent yield?
Despite how nice and tidy a balanced reaction appears, reactants can also
react in unexpected and undesirable ways such as doing an entirely different
reactionsometimes called a side reactionto give products that we don't
want. Your actual yield may change based on factors such as the relative
stability of reactants and products, the purity of the chemicals used, or the
humidity on a given day. In some cases, you might be left with all starting
materials and no products after your reaction. The possibilities are endless!
Since chemists know that the actual yield might be less than the theoretical
yield, we report the actual yield using percent yield, which tells us what
percentage of the theoretical yield we obtained. This ratio can be very
valuable to other people who might try your reaction. The percent yield is
determined using the following equation:
\text{percent yield} = \dfrac{\text{actual
yield}}{\text{theoretical yield}} \times 100\%percent yield=
theoretical yieldactual yield100%p, e, r, c, e, n, t, space, y, i, e, l, d,
equals, start fraction, a, c, t, u, a, l, space, y, i, e, l, d, divided by, t, h, e, o, r,
e, t, i, c, a, l, space, y, i, e, l, d, end fraction, times, 100, percent
First, we check to see if the reaction is balanced. It looks like we have equal
numbers of all atoms on both sides, so now we can move on to calculating
the theoretical yield.
Summary
The limiting reagent is the reactant that gets used up first during the reaction
and also determines how much product can be made. We can find the
limiting reagent using the stoichiometric ratios from the balanced chemical
reaction along with one of the many nifty methods in Example 1.
Once we know the limiting reagent, we can calculate the maximum amount
of product possible, which is called the theoretical yield. Since the actual
amount of product is often less than the theoretical yield, chemists also
calculate the percent yield using the ratio between the experimental and
theoretical yield
METHOD 1: The first method is to calculate the actual molar ratio of the
reactants, and then compare the actual ratio to the stoichiometric ratio from
the balanced reaction.