Carbon and its Compounds

Activity . Light a bunsen burner and adjust the air hole at the base to get different types of flames/presence of smoke. When do you get a yellow, sooty flame? When do you get a blue flame?

Saturated hydrocarbons will generally give a clean flame while unsaturated carbon compounds will give a yellow flame with lots of black smoke. This results in a sooty deposit on the metal plate in Activity . . However, limiting the supply of air results in incomplete combustion of even saturated hydrocarbons giving a sooty flame.

The gas/kerosene stove used at home has inlets for air so that a sufficiently oxygen-rich mixture is burnt to give a clean blue flame. If you observe the bottoms of cooking vessels getting blackened, it means that the air holes are blocked and fuel is getting wasted. Fuels such as coal and petroleum have some amount of nitrogen and sulphur in them. Their combustion results in the formation of oxides of sulphur and nitrogen which are major pollutants in the environment.