Experiment No. 7 Analysis of Hydrocarbons Introduction Hydrocarbons are the simplest organic compounds that contain only carbon and hydrogen (1). They can be straight-chain, branched chain, or cyclic molecules (2). Hydrocarbons can be divided into two groups: aliphatic hydrocarbons and aromatic hydrocarbons. Aliphatic hydrocarbons do not contain a benzene ring. They can be saturated, which means that the compound is joined by single bonds, or unsaturated, which means than the compound is joined by double or triple bonds (3). All aliphatic saturated hydrocarbons are combustible (4). Aromatic hydrocarbons are compounds that contain benzene rings. A benzene ring is a ring of six carbons with alternating double and single bonds. Aromatic compounds are generally nonpolar because of their symmetrical shape and they are immiscible with water. Because of their high ratio of carbon to hydrogen, aromatic compounds are characterized by a sooty yellow flame (5). The experiment aims to differentiate various types of hydrocarbons, to device a scheme to distinguish hydrocarbon from each type and to characterize an unknown hydrocarbon through parallel chemical tests. Methodology For the experiment, water bath in a 400mL beaker was prepared first and all of the necessary reagents were gathered. An unknown sample was obtained and analyzed through series of chemical tests. Figure 1 shows the schematic diagram of the analysis. For the Nitration test, 5 drops of sample was mixed with 8 drops o ...
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