Is chlorination or bromination more selective?
Is chlorination or bromination more selective? A chain reaction mechanism for the chlorination of methane has been described. Bromination of alkanes occurs by a similar mechanism, but is slower and more selective because a bromine atom is a less reactive hydrogen abstraction agent than a chlorine atom, as reflected by the higher bond energy of H-Cl than H-Br. What is the selectivity ratio of chlorine? In order to make this a true ratio, we need to divide the number we obtained for methyl by 3. This gives us a ratio of 55:15 , or 3.66. So for this reaction, the...