How to characterize gaseous ethylene that forms as byproduct? I'm running a reaction that has ethylene gas as a byproduct. I have observed gas evolution as my reaction proceeded and I have other ways of verifying the identity of the main product, but I thought it might be cool if I could also test for the presence of ethylene.
Are there any simple tests I can use for this purpose? Obviously it is not easy to detect since it's a fairly non-reactive gas, so it doesn't have to have 100% specificity.
If you want something simple and don't mind less than 100% certainty then you could bubble the gas through Bromine Water - in the presence of an alkene the bromine water would be decolourised from brown when reacting with the ethene.  Of course this does just indicate the presence of any alkene so isn't exactly specific! There is more about this on this website.