Question

What would you observe in the following case:

Excess of chlorine gas is reacted with ammonia gas.

Answer 1

Reaction between Ammonia and excess Chlorine:

• When Ammonia$\left({\mathrm{NH}}_3\right)$ reacts with excess Chlorine $\left({\mathrm{Cl}}_2\right)$, it will give Nitrogen trichloride $\left({\mathrm{NCl}}_3\right)$ and Hydrogen chloride gas $\left(\mathrm{HCl}\right)$ as a product.
• In this reaction, ammonia acts as a reducing agent.
• The balanced chemical equation can be written as:

$\underset{\mathrm{Ammonia}\mathrm{gas}}{{\mathrm{NH}}_3\left(\mathrm{g}\right)}+\underset{\mathrm{Chlorine}\mathrm{gas}}{3{\mathrm{Cl}}_2\left(\mathrm{g}\right)}\to \underset{\mathrm{Nitrogen}\mathrm{trichloride}}{{\mathrm{NCl}}_3\left(\mathrm{l}\right)}+\underset{\mathrm{Hydrogen}\mathrm{chloride}}{3\mathrm{HCl}\left(\mathrm{g}\right)}$

Therefore, when Ammonia reacts with an excess of Chlorine(${\mathrm{Cl}}_2$ ), a yellow-coloured highly explosive liquid of Nitrogen trichloride is formed.