Butane is an alkane compound and ethanol is an alcohol. Butane includes four carbon atoms and ethnol has two. Butane can be prepared by ethanol several methods. Finally, we discuss how butane and ethanol compounds are separated.
Question
Synthesis butane by starting from ethanol. You can only use ethanol as an organic compound. You can choose any other reactant for this conversion.
Ethanol and butane contain two and four carbon atoms respectively. We can assume two carbon chains are aggregated to form butane. Here, those two carbon chanis are prepared by ethanol here.
Ethanol is a liquid at room temperature ( 250C ). But butane is a gas at room temperature Boiling point of ethanol is higher than butane. Ethanol react with Na and emits H2(g). But butane does not react with Na.
2-butene contains four carbon atoms and double bond is located bwtween second and third carbon atoms. Therefore it is symmetric around double bond. We can brake 2-butene molecule through double bond using acidic KMnO4. There we get two ethanoic acid molecules from one 2-butene molecue. Then ethanoic acid is reduced to ethanol by LiAlH4.
The alkenes, 1-butene, 2-butene can be used to prepare butane. These alkenes react with Pt / H2 to prepare butane.
Butanal ( the aldehyde ) reacts with Zn (Hg) and concentrated HCl to give butane. This is clemmensen reduction of butanal
Butane is an alkane compound. Therefore there are only single bonds between carbon atoms.
Ethanol is a covalent compound. It contains carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
2-butene is an alkene. When alkene reacts with H2 in the presence of Ni or Pt or Pd catalyst, alkanes are given. Therefore 2-butene can be converted into butane by hydrogenation reaction.