Elimination Reactions

By James Ashenhurst

Elimination Reactions Are Favored By Heat

Last updated: December 2nd, 2022 |

Elimination Reactions Are Favored By Heat

  • Elimination reactions are often in competition with substitution reactions
  • Generally speaking, adding heat tends to increase the proportion of elimination products relative to substitution products
  • The reason is that elimination results in a greater number of species in solution, which increases entropy, (ΔS) and increasing temperature T makes the
    –TΔS term in the Gibbs free energy equation, larger.

 

Table of Contents

  1. All Else Being Equal, Elimination Reactions Are Favored Over Substitution Reactions With Increasing Heat
  2. Heating Results In A Gradual Increase In Elimination Versus Substitution
  3. Elimination Reactions Result In An Increase In The Number Of Species In Solution; Substitution Reactions Do Not
  4. Increasing Number Of Species In Solution Means Greater Entropy, Which Means That The –TΔS Term In The Gibbs Equation Increases In Value As Temperature (T) Is Increased
  5. Notes
  6. (Advanced) References and Further Reading

1. All Else Being Equal, Elimination Reactions Are Favored Over Substitution Reactions With Increasing Heat

A few posts back we saw how elimination reactions are often in competition with substitution reactions.

How do we know when one reaction pathway is going to be preferred over another? As we’ll see, there are going to be several components to answering this question fully, but today we’ll talk about one simple rule of thumb going forward.

Let’s say you have a reaction like this one. It’s possible for substitution or elimination products to be formed. [I’m keeping the identity of the base and substrate vague here.

competing substitution and elimination reactions in secondary alkyl halide which one dominates

As temperature is increased, the relative amount of elimination products will increase relative to substitution products. You can imagine it looking like this.

in competition between substitution and elimination the amount of elimination increases with heat

2. Heating Results In A Gradual Increase In Elimination Versus Substitution

Notice again how organic chemistry works. It’s not as if applying heat is an on/off switch that results in a reaction going from 100% substitution to 100% elimination. Instead, increasing temperature results in a gradual increase in elimination products relative to substitution. That’s because temperature is gradually leading to an increase in the rate constant for elimination versus rate constant for substitution.

So what’s going on here?

Here’s one thing we can say with confidence: at low temperatures, the activation energy for the substitution reaction is lower than that for the elimination reaction. Remember that the lower the activation energy, the higher the rate of the reaction. This might help to explain our product distribution: as we increase the temperature, more energy is available, so that the starting materials can ascend the activation barrier to provide elimination reactions also. This fits with what is observed.

However, there’s an even more fundamental reason why we might see more elimination products as heat is increased, and it has to do with some properties we know about thermodynamics that make rate constants (and activation energies) temperature dependent.

3. Elimination Reactions Result In An Increase In The Number Of Species In Solution; Substitution Reactions Do Not

Let’s look again at the (generic) reactions:

in elimination heat is favored because greater number of products formed greater entropy

What do we notice here? Notice that the substitution reaction we’re going from 2 species in the starting material to 2 species in the product. But in the elimination reaction, we’re going from 2 species in the starting material to 3 species in the product. An increase!

4. Increasing Number Of Species In Solution Means Greater Entropy, Which Means That The –TΔS Term In The Gibbs Equation Increases In Value As Temperature (T) Is Increased

Since we’re birthing a new species in solution here, that’s going to result in an increase in entropy. And if you think waaay back to general chemistry, the Gibbs equation told us this relationship:

ΔG =  ΔH – T ΔS

Remember that the more negative ΔG is, the more favorable the reaction. As temperature increases, that TΔS term is going to start getting bigger and bigger; this will make Δ G more and more negative. At some point, as temperature is increased, the ΔG for elimination will become more negative than delta G for substitution. In other words, more favorable.

delta g equals delta h minus t delta s as t increases the reaction with more delta s is more favorable

One thing to be careful about though! When we’re discussing ΔG, we really should be talking about the ΔG of the transition state, not that of the final product. [Why not? Because the stability of products isn’t related to reaction rate (if it was, our bodies would have combusted to CO2 and H2O a long time ago!)]. We give a special designation to thermodynamic terms of the transition state – we put a little double-dagger on them. Like this: ΔG‡  . This “Gibbs energy of activation” is how we define the activation energy of a reaction.

So you can see by analyzing this term that activation energy can change with temperature!

At low temperatures, the Gibbs energy of activation for substitution  (ΔG‡) is lower in energy (more negative) than that for elimination.  But at high temperatures, the Gibbs energy of activation ( ΔG‡ ) for elimination starts to be lower in energy than that for substitution reactions, and hence we get an increase in the amount of elimination product.

ΔG= ΔH‡–TΔS

Again, the bottom line is that, all else being equal,  heat will tend to favor elimination reactions.

Next Post: Two Types of Elimination Reactions


Notes


(Advanced) References and Further Reading

  1. Mechanism of elimination reactions. Part VII. Solvent effects on rates and product-proportions in uni- and bi-molecular substitution and elimination reactions of alkyl halides and sulphonium salts in hydroxylic solvents
    K. A. Cooper, M. L. Dhar, E. D. Hughes, C. K. Ingold, B. J. MacNulty and L. I. Woolf
    J. Chem. Soc. 1948, 2043-2049
    DOI:
    10.1039/JR9480002043
  2. Mechanism of elimination reactions. Part VIII. Temperature effects on rates and product-proportions in uni- and bi-molecular substitution and elimination reactions of alkyl halides and sulphonium salts in hydroxylic solvents
    K. A. Cooper, E. D. Hughes, C. K. Ingold, and B. J. MacNulty
    J. Chem. Soc. 1948, 2049-2054
    DOI:
    10.1039/JR9480002049
    This is the key paper here. Ingold states: “[..] for any given pair of simultaneous bimolecular processes, the elimination has, in each of the investigated cases, an Arrhenius energy of activation which lies higher than that of the accompanying substitution by 1-2 kcal/g.-mol. The elimination thus has always the larger temperature coefficient, so that a rise of temperature increases the proportions in which olefin is formed.”
  3. Mechanism of elimination reactions. Part X. Kinetics of olefin elimination from isopropyl, sec.-butyl, 2-n-amyl, and 3-n-amyl bromides in acidic and alkaline alcoholic media
    M. L. Dhar, E. D. Hughes, and C. K. Ingold
    J. Chem. Soc. 1948, 2058-2065
    DOI:
    10.1039/JR9480002058
    Nice example of the influence of heat on elimination. Table I in this paper shows that solvolysis of 2-bromobutane with 1 M NaOEt in ethanol gives 82% yield of alkene at 25 °C, but similar solvolysis at 80 °C gives 91.4% yield of alkene.

Comments

Comment section

14 thoughts on “Elimination Reactions Are Favored By Heat

  1. There is an issue with the article. Temperature changes don’t alter the activation energy (Ea), because temperature itself doesn’t nothing to stabilize the transition state. The Ea remains the same, but higher temperature allows for the products to have enough kinetic energy to reach the transition state. So the ultimate reason why the elimination product is favoured at higher temperatures is because it leads to an increase in entropy. At lower temperatures the products have a lower probability of overcoming the Ea for the elimination reaction and so the substitution reaction will dominate.

  2. Hi, I don’t understand the unit ‘kcal/g-mol’ mentioned in the second research paper, could you explain that?

  3. Thank you so much for these articles – they have been so helpful, clear, and easy to understand as I’ve studied for my midterm!!

  4. So, for example could you take 2-bromo-3-ethylpentane and treat it with NaOH (at say -78degC) to get a majority of the 2-ol product as opposed to the -ene?

    1. I think you’d find that reaction to be very slow at that temperature. If confined to NaOH as nucleophile, a better way to try to get the substitution would be to try to use phase transfer catalysis (18-crown-6) with NaOH in a polar aprotic solvent at somewhat low temperature.

  5. I get the part about elimination being more entropically favorable due to the increase in product species amount, but if you say that we should only consider the ΔG of the transition state don’t they both form only one “transition species”? Why should this entropy reasoning apply to the transition state?

    1. *Both meaning both reactions
      **What I’m trying to ask is if we should only consider the activation energy of the transition state (as opposed to the products), why does the article mainly covers the ΔG of the products?
      Would it be right to claim that the same applies for the transition state? (the transition state of an elimination reaction also includes more species than the competing SN reaction)

  6. Hm, I’m confued. Maybe it is because the text focuses on DeltaG for the reaction when it actually is all about the DeltaG‡? There are, as I can see, some fundamental differences, like the fact that whereas DeltaS~0 for the substituation and DeltaS>0 for the elimination, DeltaS‡ is *negative* for both the reactions. That would mean that DeltaG‡ actually gets *more posive* when the temperatre is raised, which would slow down both reactions. But that is not what we see experimentally. How can we make sense of this?

    Also, If we want to explain the observation that heat favours elimination, I guess we have to show that DeltaS‡ is *less negative* for elimination than for substitution. Can we be sure that that is the case, just by comparing DeltaS for the two reactions and noting that it is more positve for elimination? I’m not entierly convinced. Maybe you can help me out?

  7. Hello! Thank you for posting such a great explanative article. I have an inquiry, however, about one statement you made. You said that an increase in temperature lowers the activation energy. I thought that temperature doesn’t actually lower activation energy, rather it increases the collision frequency and energy factors of the Arrhenius equation and, in doing so, increases the rate. I thought the only thing that actually lowers the activation energy is a catalyst.

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