Problems
I've touched upon some of the problems of the synthesis of epoxyethane.
This page will just go into more detail.
The major problem in the synthesis process is controlling the temperature.
Firstly the reaction is exothermic so the temperature will tend to rise unless
it is carefully controlled. This is a problem because at higher temperatures
the ethene simply burns in the oxygen to give CO2 and water. This in
turn would increase even more!!
Hazards
There are also hazards in manufacture due to the nature of epoxyethane.
- Epoxyethane is a poisonous and carcinogenic (cancer producing) chemical
- more importantly it is a highly flammable and explosive in contact with air.
This arises from something called Ringstrain
Ringstrain
Epoxyethane is a very reactive compound and highly explosive in air so obviously
this is a serious hazard. The reactivity of epoxyethane comes about due to the structure
of the molecule. It has a three strained ring structure which is very unstable and
easily broken.
It is unstable as the atoms are all pushed closer together and the bong angles are
compressed. The overlap between the atomic orbitals in forming the carbon-carbon
and carbon-oxygen bonds is less good than it is normally, and there is considerable
repulsion between the bonding pairs. The system becomes more stable if the ring is broken.
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