Reaction Reducing agent

Oxidation reaction reducing agent -> oxidized form + ner... 

Define the following terms half-reaction, oxidation reaction, reduction reaction, reducing agent, oxidizing agent, redox reaction. 

The most abundant literature is that bearing on solar eneigy conversion, mainly centered on the use of Ru(2,2 -bipyridine)3 and its analogues. The excited state of the parent compound was found some years ago to be a powerful reducing agent [212], allowing the following spontaneous reactions to be written ... 

Reference to Figure 3.4 shows that the reduction is not feasible at 800 K. but is feasible at 1300 K. However, we must remember that energetic feasibility does not necessarily mean a reaction will go kinetic stability must also be considered. Several metals are indeed extracted by reduction with carbon, but in some cases the reduction is brought about by carbon monoxide formed when air, or air-oxygen mixtures, are blown into the furnace. Carbon monoxide is the most effective reducing agent below about 980 K, and carbon is most effective above this temperature. 

The reverse of this process was termed reduction and reagents which removed oxygen were termed reducing agents. Consider the reactions... 

Half-reaction (i) means that Co(II) in aqueous solution cannot be oxidised to Co(III) by adding ammonia to obtain the complexes in (ii), oxidation is readily achieved by, for example, air. Similarly, by adding cyanide, the hexacyanocobaltate(II) complex becomes a sufficiently strong reducing agent to produce hydrogen from water ... 

Identify the oxidising agent and the reducing agent in each reaction and write half-equations showing the donation or acceptance of electrons by each of these eight reagents. 

The reactions with water are summarised in Table 6.3. Since the metals are powerful reducing agents (p. 98) they cannot be prepared in aqueous solution electrolysis of the fused anhydrous halides is usually employed using a graphite anode. 

The alkali metal tetrahydridoborates are salts those of sodium and potassium are stable in aqueous solution, but yield hydrogen in the presence of a catalyst. They are excellent reducing agents, reducing for example ion(III) to iron(II). and silver ions to the metal their reducing power is used in organic chemistry, for example to reduce aldehydes to alcohols. They can undergo metathetic reactions to produce other borohydrides, for example... 

This can be extracted from impure phosphine prepared by the action of sodium hydroxide on phosphorus. Unlike hydrazine, it has no basic properties. It is a powerful reducing agent and burns spontaneously in air, this reaction explaining why impure phosphine containing traces of diphosphane ignites spontaneously in air. 

Although sulphur dioxide, as a gas, is a reducing agent in the sense that it unites with oxygen, free or combined (for example in dioxides or peroxides) most of its reducing reactions in aqueous solution are better regarded as reactions of sulphurous acid (in acid solution), or the sulphite ion (in alkaline solution). 

The process of extraction requires first smelting (to obtain the crude metal) and then refining. In smelting, iron ore (usually an oxide) is mixed with coke and limestone and heated, and hot air (often enriched with oxygen) is blown in from beneath (in a blast furnace). At the lower, hotter part of the furnace, carbon monoxide is produced and this is the essential reducing agent. The reduction reactions occurring may be represented for simplicity as ... 

In this oxidation state, iron is quite readily oxidised by mild oxidising agents, and hence in many of the reactions it is a mild reducing agent. For acid conditions... 

Table 1 gives a broad summary of the reactions of the corrunon classes of reducing agents, In the following sections some typical examples of synthetically useful reductions (in the educt order given on the table) together with some more sophisticated methods of stereoselective hydrogenations will be discussed. 

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