How many liters of gaseous carbon monoxide at 27 Celsius and 0.247 atm can be produced from the burning of 65.5 g of carbon according to the following equation?

Question

2C+O2 ->2CO
The answer i got was 1096.88 L CO
But it has to be 544 L CO
How do you get 544???

Answer 1

Convert 65.5g C to mols. mols = grams/molar mass
Convert mols C to mols CO using the coefficients in the balanced equation.
moles C x (2 mols CO/2 mols C) = moles C x 2/2 = ?
Then substitute mols into PV = nRT and solve for V in L. Don't forget to use T in kelvin. I obtained 544L. Post your work if you still have trouble and I'll find the error.

Answer 2

Can you explain this part:
moles C x (2 mols CO/2 mols C) = moles C x 2/2 = ?
I understand everything else now except for that

Answer 3

You have 65.5 g C which = 5.46 moles C. You want moles CO. You convert moles of one thing in chemistry to moles of anything else by multiplying by a conversion factor. For stoichiometry calculations, which this is, that factor is just moles of what we want over moles of what we have and we use the coefficients in the balanced equation to do that.
5.46 mols C x (2 moles CO/2 moles C) =
(5.46 x 2/2) = 5.46 moles CO. Note that all we've done is to use dimensional analysis for this. You see the moles C in the numerator cancels with the unit of mols C in the denominator (that's why we turned the factor the we we did). So we have canceled mols C but mols CO is still there. That's just a simple way to change moles C, which is the only number we have, to mols CO, which is what we want. The problem might have asked for volume of oxygen and we would do it the same way but with different numbers; i.e., 5.46 mols C x (1 mol O2/2 mols C) = 5.46 x (1/2) = 2.73 mols oxygen and if we wanted the volume under those same conditions we would substitute mols oxygen into PV = nRT ad solve for volume. Hope this helps. It isn't complicated.

Answer 4

Thanks so much. Very helpful :)