Why is it necessary to determine if a reactant is a limiting reagent in a reaction?

Answer 1

Well, would this not have an obvious effect on yield?

A fairly recent idea in Chemistry is the notion of #"atom economy"#..i.e. the use of the minimum number of atoms when making a chemical. The higher the atom economy, the greener, and more environmentally benign the process. Of course, for simple #A+BrarrC# syntheses, we clearly want to know the quantity of #C# we use, and if the reagents #A# and #B# are expensive or hard to synthesize, we want to use them in minimum quantity, and with optimum yield.

Furthermore, it is obvious that an industrial chemist would want to maximize a process's yield, which means they would require information on the fundamental reaction.

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Answer 2

Jeremiah Adams

To ensure maximum product yield and avoid wasting excess reactants.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.