Hydrocarbons & Chemical Industries

What this lesson covers

Hydrocarbons & Chemical Industries is a 9-part Class 10 Chemistry lesson. Each part makes one point and then hands over to the next, so it can be read in a sitting or picked up again at the part you stopped on. It defines the idea in plain words before using it, works through an example step by step, shows where it is used outside the textbook, names the mistakes that cost marks in an exam, ends with a recap of what to remember.

How it begins

A hydrocarbon contains hydrogen and carbon only. Crude oil is a mixture of hundreds of them, useless until separated. They are separated by fractional distillation, which works because boiling point rises with chain length. The oil is vaporised and fed into a column that is hot at the bottom, cool at the top. Short chains: low boiling point, rise high, collected near the top: refinery gases, petrol.

The 9 parts

1. Crude oil and fractional distillation
2. Cracking: making what people want
3. The Haber process
4. The environmental cost
5. Reversible reactions and equilibrium
6. Fertiliser, food and the cost
7. Where marks get lost
8. What to remember
9. Watch one worked through