Limiting Reactants Question

[Maylin Garcia]

I'm doing some review on limiting reactants and I had a question on determining which product to use when determining the limiting reactant. For instance a reaction has 3FeO(s) +2Al(s)--> Al2O3(s) +Al2O3(s) . To find the limiting reactant the question gives the amount of iron(II) oxide and the amount of aluminum in grams. I know that I have to convert grams to moles and then use the ratio of the mols of reactant to the mols of product. In this case we were supposed to compare it to the mols of Fe but i'm wondering why it's Fe and not Al2O3 in the product. How am I supposed to know which product to use to determine this if it is not explicitly mentioned in the question?

[Kevin_Conrad_2E]

To determine the limiting reactant in a chemical reaction, you don't actually need to consider the moles of the products at all. Instead, you compare the mole ratios of the reactants as given in the balanced chemical equation. The key is to find out which reactant is in insufficient quantity to react with the other reactant completely.

[506047744]

For limiting reactant problems, you convert the known masses of the reactants and products into moles and compare this to the mole ratios that you determine through the balanced equation.