'' Hydrocarbons are important sources of energy.''
The term ' hydrocarbon' is self- explanatory which means compounds of carbon and hydrogen only.
Hydrocarbons play a key 🗝️ role in our daily life. You must be familiar with the term 'LPG' and 'CNG' used as fuels. LPG is the abbreviated from of liquified petroleum gas whereas CNG stands for compressed natural gas. Another term 'LNG' (liquified natural gas) is also in news these days. This is also a fuel and is obtained by luquifaction of natural gas.
Petrol, diesel and kerosene oil are obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum found under the earth's crush.
Coal gas is found in upper strata during drilling of coal. Natural gas is found is upper drilling of oil wells. The gas after compression is known as compressed natural gas. LPG is used as a domestic fuel with the least pollution. Kerosene oil is also used ad a domestic fuel but it cause some pollution.
Automobiles need fuels like petrol, diesel and CNG. Petrol and CNG operated automobiles causes less pollution.
All these fuels contain mixture of hydrocarbons, which are sources of energy.
Hydrocarbons are also used for the manufacturer of polymers like polythene, polypropene, polystyrene etc. Higher hydrocarbons are used as solvents for paints. They are also used as the starting material for manufacture of many dyes and drugs.
Thus, you can well understand the importance of hydrocarbons in your daily life.
Classification
Hydrocarbons are of different types. Depending upon the types of carbon-carbon bonds present, they can be classified into tree main categories-
- Saturated
- Unsaturated
- Aromatic hydrocarbons
Saturated hydrocarbons single bonds. If different carbon atoms are joined together to form open chain of carbon atoms with single bonds, they are termed as alkanes.
On the other hand, if carbon atoms from a closed chain or a ring, they are termed as cycloalkanes. Unsturated hydrocarbons contain carbon- carbon multiple bond- double bonds or both. Aromatic hydrocarbons are a special types of cyclic compounds. You can construct a large number of model of such molecules of both types (open chain and close chain) keeping bin mind that carbon is teyravalent and hydrogen is monovalent. For making models of alkanes, you can use toothpicks for bonds and plasticine balls for atoms. For alkenes, alkynes and aromatic hydrocarbons, spring models can be constructed.
