Comparison of the Heats of Formation of Hydrocarbons

In order to facilitate the demonstration of the structure dependent stabilizing or destabilizing energy effects characterizing the individual hydrocarbons it is suggested to replace graphite. and hydrogen as reference substances (used in calculating the heats of formation) by the series of n-alkanes. This can be achieved by converting the heats of formation into relative enthalpies (HreJ). The proposed simple equation yields zero for the Hrel of n-alkanes and thus the extra stabilizing or destabilizing effects caused for example by branching or unsaturation, respectively, in other types of compounds are directly expressed by the numerical value of their Hrel