Carbon atoms oxidation states

Methane is oxidized because there has been an increase in carbon s oxidation state (the carbon atom has formaiiy iost eiectrons). 

When dealing with carbon atoms, oxidations and reductions are often easy to recognize without calculating oxidation numbers. Any reaction that increases the number of C-O bonds (while decreasing the number of C-H or C-C bonds) is described as an oxidation. Any reaction that decreases the number of C-O bonds (while also increasing the number of C-H or C-C bonds) is described as a reduction. Since stable carbon atoms contain four bonds, an example of the most oxidized state of carbon can be found in CO2 (product... 

The concept of oxidation states is best applied only to germanium, tin and lead, for the chemistry of carbon and silicon is almost wholly defined in terms of covalency with the carbon and silicon atoms sharing all their four outer quantum level electrons. These are often tetrahedrally arranged around the central atom. There are compounds of carbon in which the valency appears to be less than... 

Some transition metal atoms combined with uncharged molecules as ligands (notahiv carbon monoxide. CO) have a formal oxidation state of 0. for example Ni + 4CO Ni"(CO)4. 

These numbers carry other chemical information. For example, z - h = x gives the oxidation state of a carbon atom. In effect, each carbon atom is classified according to its oxidation state, x, and its attachment to other carbon atoms. 

Naphthalene (qv) from coal tar continued to be the feedstock of choice ia both the United States and Germany until the late 1950s, when a shortage of naphthalene coupled with the availabihty of xylenes from a burgeoning petrochemical industry forced many companies to use o-xylene [95-47-6] (8). Air oxidation of 90% pure o-xylene to phthaUc anhydride was commercialized ia 1946 (9,10). An advantage of o-xylene is the theoretical yield to phthaUc anhydride of 1.395 kg/kg. With naphthalene, two of the ten carbon atoms are lost to carbon oxide formation and at most a 1.157-kg/kg yield is possible. Although both are suitable feedstocks, o-xylene is overwhelmingly favored. Coal-tar naphthalene is used ia some cases, eg, where it is readily available from coke operations ia steel mills (see Steel). Naphthalene can be produced by hydrodealkylation of substituted naphthalenes from refinery operations (8), but no refinery-produced napthalene is used as feedstock. Alkyl naphthalenes can be converted directiy to phthaUc anhydride, but at low yields (11,12). 

Oxidation can also occur at the central metal atom of the phthalocyanine system (2). Mn phthalocyanine, for example, can be produced ia these different oxidation states, depending on the solvent (2,31,32). The carbon atom of the ring system and the central metal atom can be reduced (33), some reversibly, eg, ia vattiag (34—41). Phthalocyanine compounds exhibit favorable catalytic properties which makes them interesting for appHcations ia dehydrogenation, oxidation, electrocatalysis, gas-phase reactions, and fuel cells (qv) (1,2,42—49). 

In recent years, especially in the USSR and Europe, synthetic fatty acids, prepared via hydrocarbon oxidation, have been used to prepare fatty amines (2,9). In 1978 Eastern Europeans produced an estimated 0.55 biUion kg of synthetic fatty acids with odd and even numbers of carbon atoms, whereas in the United States, production of natural fatty acids with even carbon atom chain-length acids was 435 million kg. To date, there has been no significant production of synthetic fatty acids in the United States. 

Oxidations of nitrogen compounds include oxidauon ai nitrogen, when it is in a lower oxidation state, or at a carbon atom in the nitrogen compound. 

The substrates of catabolism—proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids—are good sources of chemical energy because the carbon atoms in these molecules are in a relatively reduced state (Figure 18.9). In the oxidative reactions of catabolism, reducing equivalents are released from these substrates, often in the form of hydride ions (a proton coupled with two electrons, H ). These hydride ions are transferred in enzymatic dehydrogenase reactions from the substrates... 

The mechanism for the conversion of the A -oxide (94) to the o-methylaminophenylquinoxaline (96) involves an initial protonation of the A -oxide function. This enhances the electrophilic reactivity of the a-carbon atom which then effects an intramolecular electrophilic substitution at an ortho position of the anilide ring to give the spiro-lactam (98). Hydrolytic ring cleavage of (98) gives the acid (99), which undergoes ready dehydration and decarboxylation to (96), the availability of the cyclic transition state facilitating these processes. ... 

The lobes of electron density outside the C-O vector thus offer cr-donor lone-pair character. Surprisingly, carbon monoxide does not form particularly stable complexes with BF3 or with main group metals such as potassium or magnesium. Yet transition-metal complexes with carbon monoxide are known by the thousand. In all cases, the CO ligands are bound to the metal through the carbon atom and the complexes are called carbonyls. Furthermore, the metals occur most usually in low formal oxidation states. Dewar, Chatt and Duncanson have described a bonding scheme for the metal - CO interaction that successfully accounts for the formation and properties of these transition-metal carbonyls. 

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