What organic chemical reaction will make an alkane like ethane to become a double bonded 2 carbon chain?
You are trying to reduce ethane to ethene, I am guessing. That is a very hard reaction to do… probably you will have to do a free radical halogenation on ethane to form 1-chloroethane, followed by an E2 reaction with t-butoxide or some other bulky base to form ethene. Since ethane and ethene are both gases and cheaply available from petroleum cracking, this reaction really isn’t worth doing.
