Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Pentaerythritol?

trinitrotoluene - 28-12-2002 at 00:27

I was wondering does anyone has info no the synthesis on Pentaerythritol? Pyrotek used to sell that chemical but don't nomore.I had emailed them about it and they said " You need an ATF permit to order it". I did some searching and found meglomanias method but its too complicated. Does anyone have a method of synthesizing it?

blazter - 28-12-2002 at 08:26

should be fairly simple to synthesize PE if you can get acetaldhyde. the other important precursor is paraformaldhyde which is fairly easily obtained as holding tank deoderizer, although it needs to be washed of dyes, oils and fragrances. The orgsyn method can be found here :

http://www.orgsyn.org/orgsyn/prep.asp?prep=cv1p0425

the complicated apparatus they show in there is probably not needed and the procedure could be modified as needed.

Anarchist - 28-12-2002 at 10:31

These guys seem to carry it www.allchem.com except they don't say whether or not you need a license to order it.

Trioxane

Aechaen - 30-1-2003 at 18:10

Isn't paraformaldehyde avaliable as trioxane?

Yes & No

KABOOOM(pyrojustforfun) - 15-7-2003 at 18:51

as I had said before (u could search) trioxane is cyclic trimer of formaldehyde but paraformaldehyde or simply paraform is a polymer of formaldehyde with a number of 8-100 monomer HO(CH2O)H but sometimes paraform is sold under the name of trioxane.

<b>how much does alkalinity care?</b>
if it doesn't need to be very alkali then hexamin can be used in lieu of formaldehyde. boil away all the water then heat to near 260°C(mp of PE) so NH4OOCH dehydrates forming volatile formamide & H2O so u r left with PE in your container. sounds very easy comfortable and fast if it works. summarizing the whole reactions:
3 CH<sub>3</sub>CHO + 2 C<sub>6</sub>H<sub>12</sub>N<sub>4</sub> + 12 H<sub>2</sub>O => 3 C(CH<sub>2</sub>OH)<sub>4</sub> + 3 HCONH<sub>2</sub> + 5 NH<sub>3</sub>

chemoleo - 25-8-2003 at 16:40

has anyone actually made it according to the orgsyn method (see earlier post)? cus I am thinking of doing so myself. starting materials are CH2O 37% and acetaldehyde in my case. ..

Another one: the formaldehyde-"retro"-synth

BASF - 26-8-2003 at 05:10

Heat calcium formate.

Metaldehyde in place of acetaldehyde??

froot - 3-6-2005 at 04:00

Found this: http://www.greatvistachemicals.com/agrochemicals/metaldehyde...

So metaldehyde ((CH3CHO)4) is basically polymerised acetaldehyde (CH3CHO), just like paraformaldehyde is of formaldehyde.
Any ideas on using it as an acetaldehyde replacement in the pentaerythritol synth? It is obtainable as snailbait, the only issue would be to purify it.