Chlorine (bleach) and alcohol (ethanol?).

  • Thread starter Thread starter APeterson
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Alcohol Ethanol
AI Thread Summary
The discussion centers on the chemical reaction between chlorine and alcohol, specifically in the context of videos showing this reaction. Participants clarify that the reaction likely involves hypochlorite, not elemental chlorine, as hypochlorite can oxidize alcohol to yield carboxylic acids and chlorine gas. It is noted that household bleach, which contains about 5-6% hypochlorite, is less reactive than calcium hypochlorite tablets, which have a higher concentration of active chlorine (around 70%). The reaction is exothermic, producing heat that accelerates the decomposition of the hypochlorite, releasing chlorine gas that reacts with isopropanol. For further understanding of the reaction mechanism and products, the "Haloform Reaction" is recommended as a relevant topic for research.
APeterson
Messages
6
Reaction score
0
I recently saw a few videos on Youtube of people making a reaction by putting chlorine and alcohol together in a bottle. For the life of me I can't figure out why that reaction would work, and I wondered if anybody could give me an equation. Thanks.
 
Last edited:
Chemistry news on Phys.org
I'm guessing that hypochlorite oxidizes alcohol yielding carboxylic acid and chlorine gas.
 
qalomel said:
I'm guessing that hypochlorite oxidizes alcohol yielding carboxylic acid and chlorine gas.

If there is chlorine in products there was no oxidation.
 
Chlorine had an oxidation state of +1 before the reaction. Afterwards, it is 0. Chlorine gains an electron in the reaction and thus it oxidizes something.
 
Original question called for the presence of chlorine, not hypochlorite.
 
I was guessing that the original question (and the Youtube videos) referred to chlorine as household bleach.
 
And it is quite possible you were right, I was just nitpicking :-p
 
Hmm. Thanks guys. I don't know if it was bleach or not, but I'm pretty confident it wasn't plain old Cl2. ;)
 
I believe it was calcium hypochlorite tablets or granules. Pretty concentrated hypochlorite. Household bleach is only about 5-6% hypochlorite in solution. The tablets are something like 70% active chlorine so they are a lot more reactive than bleach when heated. The heat is the thing that releases the chlorine rapidly. Once the reaction starts, the tablets heat up, decompose, produce lots of heat and gaseous products (like chlorine). It's autocatalytic with respect to heat and the decomposition product, chlorine, is quite reactive with hot isopropanol.

Edit: If you are interested in the mechanism or products produced, review "Haloform Reaction". Great Google term.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top