Hi everyone,
I’ve been asked to workout the energy of reaction at 0 kelvin for the reaction between HCl and DCl. The only thing I know is an absorption line of HCl of 2991 cm-1.
From this I was able to work out the zero point energy for both HCl and DCl. I’ve presumed that they both have the same force constant, and the question states to use the approximation of a classical harmonic oscillator.
My zero point energy values for HCl and DCl are 17.9 KJ mol-1 and 12.8 KJ mol-1 respectively.
So would the answer simply be the difference between the zero point energies of HCl and DCl?
I’m not sure because I get an equilibrium constant of about 0.99 at 300 kelvin (this is when the energy of reaction is approximately the Gibbs free energy of the system) if I do treat the energy of reaction as the difference between the two, which seems quite high due to the amount of deuterium in the universe against the amount of hydrogen...