Gas Stoichiometry

We cannot count molecules so instead we weigh them; however, it is extremely

inconvenient to weigh gases. So, when adding gases to a reaction how do we measure
the amount of gas? We use the Ideal Gas Law. How....

34.0 mL of a 6.0 M sulfuric acid solution is spilled on the floor. The acid is
neutralized by pouring sodium hydrogen carbonate on the spilled acid. What is the
volume, in L, of the carbon dioxide which is released? The gas being released is at 25
°C and 1 atm.

We need to know the number of moles of CO2 which are released to find the volume.

So, how many moles of acid are neutralized..

which is how many liters?

PV=nRT

V = 9.98 L CO2

So, when gases are involved in reactions we can relate volume or pressure to moles
using the Ideal Gas Law.

At constant temperature and presure, volumes of gas can be related directly to each
other.

e.g.

At constant temperature and pressure 2 L of H2 are combined with 3 L of Cl2. How

many liters of HCl will form?
Without knowing the temperaute and pressure we cannot determine the number of
moles of either H2 or Cl2 present. Since the temperature and pressure are contant we
can relate volumes of gas as though they are moles of gas....watch.

So,

Normaly, to relate H2 to Cl2 we must convert to moles...

Since temperature and pressure are constant the pressure of H2 equals the pressure of
HCl; so, the numbers needed to perform the conversion cancel out!

There is enough H2 to produce 4 L of HCl, but what about the Cl2?

This is really a limiting reagent problem hidden in a gas problem! There is enough
Cl2 to make 6 L HCl, but there is only enough H2 to make 4 L of HCl.

Only 4 L of HCl can be made in this reaction.

We just found that

"At constant temperature and presure volumes of gas can be related directly to each
other."

A similar statement can be made about pressure and moles!

At constant temperature and volume the pressure of gases can be related directly to
eachother.

The combustion of methane, CH4 at a pressure of 3 atm, in the presence of O2, at a

pressure of 10 atm, occured in a sealed container. Determine the pressure of the gases
in the container after the container returns to room temperature.
There is enough methane to make

There is enough oxygen to make

So, 3 atm CO2 will form. All of the CH4 will be consumed, but

leaving 1 atm of O2.

So, the total pressure is

P = 7 atm

This brings us to the concept of partial pressure.

← What are electrons and orbitals?
Solutions Stoichiometry →

Gas stoichiometry
Posted on February 10, 2016by misterguch
(Updated 10-26-16)
At some point in your chemistry career (probably now), somebody (probably an
instructor) will ask you to do something that combines the twin fun of gas laws and
stoichiometry. And, like most students, you say to yourself, “Man, that stoichometry
sucks.” Even if you understand stoichiometry (and hopefully you do), you’ll still say that
because everybody in your class will think you’re a nerd if you don’t. Nobody wants
that.

In any case, let’s learn how to do some gas stoichiometry.

What is stoichiometry?
The short answer: Stoichiometry is how you figure out how much stuff will be made
in a chemical reaction, or how much stuff you’ll need to use when performing a chemical
reaction. The calculations that make this possible make heavy use of chemical
equations. In the case of gas stoichiometry, gas laws are required in at least one of these
calculations.

This child is upset because he doesn’t yet have the mathematical knowledge to perform stoichiometric calculations.

The long answer: Visit this tutorial for the full explanation, and then imagine adding
gas laws to it. That’s gas stoichiometry.

The basics of gas stoichiometry

I want to say again that this tutorial will assume that you know how to do regular
stoichiometry using grams and moles and such. If you don’t, you need to go back to this
tutorial to learn about it.
If you already know how to perform stoichiometry calculations, this diagram shouldn’t
be too scary:

Think of this as a roadmap to stoichiometry of just about any kind. To use it, figure out
where you’re starting from and where you’re ending, and do the calculations that
correspond to the journey you need to take.

Before you embark on this voyage, I want to clarify some things about this diagram to
make it simple:

 The terms “known” and “unknown” refer to the things that you are given in the
problem and the things you are trying to find, respectively. For example, if the
problem says “How many liters of water vapor can you make from 2.44 grams of
hydrogen when it’s combined with an excess of oxygen?”, the known is 2.44 grams of
hydrogen (you know how much you have from the problem) and the unknown is
liters of water vapor because that’s what you’re trying to find.
 You need to do one calculation for each box you move across in this diagram. For
example, if you go from “grams known” to “liters unknown” (as you would in the
example above), you’ll need to do three calculations (grams known → moles known,
moles known → moles unknown, and moles unknown → liters unknown.
 STP refers to the term “standard temperature and pressure”, and is equal to 273 K
(0° C) and a pressure of 1 atm. 1 mole of a gas is equivalent to 22.4 liters only at STP
– you’ll need to use PV = nRT to figure out what it is for other conditions.
 As is the case in all gas law calculations, calculations should always refer to
temperature in Kelvin and not in degrees Celsius. You can find Kelvin from degrees
Celsius by adding 273.
In other words, this is pretty much the same blueprint as I had in the regular
stoichiometry tutorial. If you understood that, you shouldn’t have too much trouble. If
you don’t know standard grams – moles stoichiometry, you really need to go back to this
tutorial to learn it.
Doing a gas stoichiometry calculation
Rather than going through a bunch of steps that tell you what you ought to do, I’m going
to solve problems so you can figure it out by seeing it done for real. Let’s see an
example:

Example: When energy is added, we see the following reaction:

3 H₂ + N₂ → 2 NH₃

All of these chemical species are gases. If I were to perform this reaction with 17.5
grams of nitrogen gas and an excess of hydrogen gas, how many liters of ammonia will I
make at STP?

Solution: Our first step will be to figure out what the heck we need to do in this
reaction. Let’s refer back to the diagram above to make sense of it:

As you can tell from my subtle use of shading, we aren’t going to be dealing with liters of
known or grams of unknown. Instead, we’ll be doing three calculations, starting with
grams of nitrogen and wrapping up with liters of ammonia.

Let’s see how.

Step 1: Draw a t
You always do this when doing either mole calculations or stoichiometry, so draw one
here:

Step 2: Put whatever you’re starting with in the top left part of the t:
Step 3: Put the units of whatever is in the top left on the bottom right. Since we start
with “g nitrogen”, we’ll put that in the bottom right:

Step 4: Put the units of whatever you’re trying to find in this calculation in the top
right. As you can see from the cool diagram, our first step is taking us from “g nitrogen”
to “moles nitrogen”:

Step 5: Put conversion factors in front of the units given. Here are the rules you need
to follow:
 Always write the molar mass of the compound before the word “grams” in a unit
conversion.
 In all steps other than the mole ratio, write “1” in front of the word “moles.”
 In the mole ratio step, the numbers before each “moles” are the coefficients in each
equation.
In this case, what this means is that we write “1” in front of “moles nitrogen” (it’s not the
mole ratio, so we always write “1” in front of moles) and “28.0 grams” in front of “g
nitrogen” (28.0 is the molar mass of nitrogen gas):

Step 6: The problem is now 1/3 finished, with the grams nitrogen to moles
nitrogen step taken care of. I won’t go through all the steps, but you basically do exactly
the same thing in our second calculation:

I’ll walk you through it in case you had some problems:

 First, I wrote “mol nitrogen” in the bottom right.

 Next, I wrote “mol ammonia” in the top right.
 Finally, I put the conversion factors in front of each. Because this is the mole ratio
step, 2 goes in front of ammonia (check the equation!) and 1 goes in front of
nitrogen (check the equation!).
Step 7: Switching gears to gases
Now that we’ve done some moles-grams stuff, you’ll notice that our next step is to
convert from moles of ammonia to liters of ammonia. This is done using our friend PV
= nRT, or in the case of gases at STP, 22.4 L/mol.
In this example we’re at STP, so we’ll just continue the calculation above using “22.4 L”
as our conversion factor:

Step 8: Finding our answer

To find the answer to this calculation, multiply all the terms on the top together (17.5 x 1
x 2 x 22.4) and divide by the product of the terms on the bottom (28.0 x 1 x 1). If you do
the calculation accurately, you should find that you have 28.0 liters of ammonia gas.
Which is the answer.

What if we’re not at STP?

Let’s say that we’re going to do the same reaction as above, except that we’ll be
performing the reaction at a pressure of 1.50 atm and a temperature of 425 K. What
happens then?

In the first few steps, it turns out that we do exactly the same thing that we did before.
Unless we’re dealing with a gas, our stoichiometry doesn’t care at all what the pressure
and temperature are. What this means is that everything above is identical up through
step 6:

Our last step, on the other hand, is a little different, because we can’t use 22.4 liters as
our conversion factor. After all, we’re not at STP!

Our solution, as the big diagram suggests, is to use PV = nRT to figure out our
conversion factor (if you don’t know how, visit this tutorial). To do this, simply put the
terms from the problem into this equation, and leave the number of moles as “1”. This
will give you your conversion factor:
PV = nRT

(1.50 atm)(V) = (1.00 mol)(0.08206 L atm/mol K)(425 K)

V = 23.3 L

At this point, we use 23.3 L instead of 22.4 L in our calculation to give us our final
answer:
 = 25.5 liters

That’s about it for gas stoichiometry. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing
it. Which may be the case, as it’s not the most exciting thing in the world to write about.
You didn’t think that chemists love every part of chemistry, did you? Just because it’s
important doesn’t make it interesting!

https://chemfiesta.org/2016/02/10/gas-stoichiometry/