Free-Radical Chain Of Chlorination

Introduction:
For this lab, the main focused involved alkanes and hydrocarbons. Essentially, the free-radical chain of chlorination of 1-Chlorobutne. Free radical-chains occur because alkanes are chemically unreactive with most agents. However, the free-radical chain allows a pathway of certain functional groups like alkyl chloride or bromides. In addition, chlorine atoms can possibly be made from molecular chlorine under low to mild conditions with the usage of a catalytic amount of an initiator. Sulfuryl chloride is used in this lab instead of molecular chloride for safety purposes. Free radical chain of chlorination takes palace in three separate steps. These steps are the initiation step, the propagation step and the termination. The purpose
Something to note is that sulfuryl chloride reacts more gently then molecular chloride with alkanes. Molecular chloride is less stable then sulfuryl chloride and is very hazardous. Exposure to molecular chloride for a long time is toxic and can lead to something known as wet lungs, which is excess fluids that resides in the lungs. Because molecular chloride is less stable, the conditions for the experiment has to be increased. In essence, the temperature needed to have some sort of reaction will be greater than using the initiator (200-400°C) with the usage of UV light. This is an advantage of using the initiator for the fact that the needed temperature ranges from 80-100°C. To avoid any hazardous conditions to occur if molecular chloride is used, for safety purposes sulfuryl chloride is used instead. The benefit of using sulfuryl chloride in the reaction is that it forms equimolar amounts of both sulfur dioxide and hydrochloric acid which are both loss during the reaction mixture. This leads to the ability to observe chlorination better and be able to calculate the theoretical loss of mass that occurred during the
To determine this, the different isomers are dictated by their relative energies of the transition states between the various C-H bonds. One thing to know is that these energies are directed by both a statistical factor and an energy factor. To elaborate on what statistical factor is the number of hydrogen atoms that will be replaced creating specific constitutional isomers. In comparison, energy factor is determined by the strength of the type of C-H bond being broken, also known as the relative reactivity. Normally, primary bonds are stronger than secondary bonds, but is not the case when a chloro substituent is present. This is effecting by the electron withdrawing effect and increases the strength of C-H bonds and proportionally decreasing relative reactivity. In essence, the closer the C-H bond is to the chlorine, the stronger the bond. When this is the case, 1, 3 dichlorobutane is the major product and 1,1 dichlorobutane is the minor