Friday, December 26, 2008

Hydrogen Peroxide and Ozone

Three days ago, while I was reading an article about Oxygenated Water (H2O2) and Ozone (O3) chemistry, I saw 3 different reactions between the same substances mentioned above, all three possible. The reactions were:
  1. 2H2O2 + 4O3 → 2H2O + 7O2
  2. H2O2 + O3 → H2O + 2O2
  3. H2O2 + 3O3 → H2O + 5O2
I let the book down for a minute and asked myself why: "Why all three reactions are possible?". Immediately, I realised that the first one is the sum of the last two; so, all I had to do is to prove the last 2 reactions.
  1. H2O2 + O3 → H2O + 2O2
    • RedOx Method
    • Firstly everything went wrong. I thought that the oxygen atoms in the H2O2 molecule have the oxidation state number -2, but after a little bit of documentation I had found that, due to it's allotropic state, oxygen in H2O2 has an N.O. of -1 .

      OK. This wasn't a problem any more. Then, i noticed that O atoms are both the oxidizers and the reducers in the reaction (Nothing new, of course. There are such reactions, in nature, where the same element is both reducer and oxidizer; for example H2SO4 + S → SO2 + H2). In conclusion the partial ionization reactions are:

      O-1(H2O2) —( -1e- )→ O0(O2) O0(O3) —( +2e- )→ O-2(H2δ+Oδ-)

      Reaction Possible.

    • Separate Decomposition Equations Method
    • In a more simple way, I could solve this by taking the reactions separately, making an equation system, multiplying each reaction by the coefficients resulted and finally, adding everything up.

      So we have:

      H2O2 → H2O + 1/2 O2

      O3 ↔ 3/2O2

      ————————————(+)

      H2O2 + O3 → H2O + 2O2 (→TRUE)

  2. H2O2 + 3O3 → H2O + 5O2
  3. We observe that this reaction is just the anterior one with one more O3 ↔ 3/2O2 added. That means that in an athmosphere of O3 in exces this is perfectly possible. (→TRUE)
From these two we deduce that the first one is also plausible. And that's it: All three are true!

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