Ethylene

Ethylene

Do you have the experience that bunch of bananas ripen at the same time and rot because you don’t have enough time to eat them in a short time? What I want to introduce this week is relation to this happening. After knowing the compound caused it, you will also know how to prevent it. This important compound is ethylene

    Ethylene is a hydrocarbon which has the formula C₂H₄, known as the simplest alkene. In the normal temperature and pressure state (NTP), it is colorless, flammable dissolving easily in the non-polar solvent gas. Besides, because it is a natural plant hormone, it can be used to force the ripening of fruits.

     Why the bananas sometimes rot so fast? The answer to the question is that banana itself will discharge ethylene. What’s worse, the riper the banana is, the more ethylene would be discharged. Therefore, if you put all the bananas in an airtight while ripening, the number of ethylene discharged would very helpful to rot them. After knowing this, what you can do is preventing put all the bananas in an airtight space. In addition to this way, it is also necessity to prevent from putting apples or persimmons with bananas because they also discharge ethylene so much.

There are still some important applications such as polyethylene. If you still interest in it, you can browse the website below.

http://wiki.eanswers.com/en/Polyethylene?ext=t&cid=5036