Question

You perform combustion analysis on 255 mg of a molecule that contains only C,H, and O, and you find that 561 mg CO2 is produced, along with 306 mg H2O. If the molecule contains only C, H, and O, what is the emperical formula? If the molar mass of the compound is 180g/mol, what is the molecular formula of the compound?

Answer 1

Carbon C:
0.153 gC/12gC = 0.0127 molC/0.0074375
= 1.714

Hydrogen H2 :
0.017 gH/1 gH = 0.017 molH/0.0074375
= 2.29

Oxygen O2 :
0.119 gO/16g = 0.0074375 molO/0.0074375
= 1