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Ethylene (IUPAC name: ethene) is a hydrocarbon which has the formula C 2 H 4 or H 2 C=CH 2.It is a colourless, flammable gas with a faint "sweet and musky" odour when pure. [7] It is the simplest alkene (a hydrocarbon with carbon–carbon double bonds).
A bond between a hydrogen atom and an sp 2 hybridised carbon atom is about 0.6% shorter than between hydrogen and sp 3 hybridised carbon. A bond between hydrogen and sp hybridised carbon is shorter still, about 3% shorter than sp 3 C-H. This trend is illustrated by the molecular geometry of ethane, ethylene and acetylene. [citation needed]
The chief use of ethane is the production of ethylene (ethene) by steam cracking. Steam cracking of ethane is fairly selective for ethylene, while the steam cracking of heavier hydrocarbons yields a product mixture poorer in ethylene and richer in heavier alkenes (olefins), such as propene (propylene) and butadiene, and in aromatic hydrocarbons.
Carbon is one of the few elements that can form long chains of its own atoms, a property called catenation.This coupled with the strength of the carbon–carbon bond gives rise to an enormous number of molecular forms, many of which are important structural elements of life, so carbon compounds have their own field of study: organic chemistry.
Ethylene (ethene), a small organic molecule containing a pi bond, shown in green.. In chemistry, pi bonds (π bonds) are covalent chemical bonds, in each of which two lobes of an orbital on one atom overlap with two lobes of an orbital on another atom, and in which this overlap occurs laterally.
For example, CH 3-CH 3 is the alkane ethANe. The name of CH 2 =CH 2 is therefore ethENe. For straight-chain alkenes with 4 or more carbon atoms, that name does not completely identify the compound. For those cases, and for branched acyclic alkenes, the following rules apply: Find the longest carbon chain in the molecule.
Labinger's argument, later demonstrated experimentally by Mazanec et al., is based on the mechanism of methane activation, which is a radical mechanism, forming H and CH3 radicals by the homolytic cleavage of the C-H bond. Ethylene and ethane that are proposed products have C-H bonds of similar strength.
In ethene, the two carbon atoms form a σ bond by overlapping one sp 2 orbital from each carbon atom. The π bond between the carbon atoms perpendicular to the molecular plane is formed by 2p–2p overlap. Each carbon atom forms covalent C–H bonds with two hydrogens by s–sp 2 overlap, all with 120° bond angles. The hydrogen–carbon bonds ...