Junk_Enginerd
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Can you make methanol from formic acid?
I need methanol as a reagent for making solvents, but I've looked around extensively and cannot find any way to buy it here in sweden.
So. Most syntheses for methanol seems pretty industrial in their nature, and not really realistic. Wood dry distillation has useless yields and a lot
of garbage.
But I do have a bunch of 30% formic acid, and that's an oxidized form of methanol, right? Can it be reduced back to methanol somehow, or is it a
little too far fetched?
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Benignium
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With the risk of being of no help at all - have you thought about Ebay?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Methanol-99-85-1-Litre-1L-High-Puri...
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Alkoholvergiftung
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Dry Destillation of Zinkformiat gives you Methanol.
Or maybe if you mix jest suggar and an lot of pektine at warmer temperaturs it should give you an mix of methanol and ethanol because when you make
alkohol and you have lot of inpuritis (pektine) (shaft, leavs, and the binding mater from appels) you get the blind making kind of alkohol.
You can buy pektine its used as an gelling agent.
I dont have tried this methode its only my theorie.
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Refinery
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Just as I was thinking that formaldehyde can be made from methanol, because latter is very otc but former(pun) has no consumer sources.
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JJay
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It's possible with lithium aluminum hydride. It can probably be done with nickel boride.
I don't think there is an easy method like heating formic acid and sodium formate together in a sealed tube. It looks like it may be possible to
produce formic acid and sodium formate from methanol with sodium carbonate with enough heat and pressure, but I don't suggest trying it.
Heating an equimolar mixture of sodium formate, formic acid, and hydrogen would produce sodium bicarbonate and methanol.
Neither of these reactions is likely to be safely achievable in many amateur labs. Methanol is one of the cheapest and most readily available
chemicals... surely you can find it somewhere.
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SWIM
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I wonder if passing water gas over a suitable catalyst would give you a decent methanol yield.
Instructions I've seen for making water gas look fairly simple.
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Junk_Enginerd
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Quote: Originally posted by Alkoholvergiftung  | Dry Destillation of Zinkformiat gives you Methanol.
Or maybe if you mix jest suggar and an lot of pektine at warmer temperaturs it should give you an mix of methanol and ethanol because when you make
alkohol and you have lot of inpuritis (pektine) (shaft, leavs, and the binding mater from appels) you get the blind making kind of alkohol.
You can buy pektine its used as an gelling agent.
I dont have tried this methode its only my theorie. |
So zinc + formic acid, dry it, distill it? Well that sounds very straightforward and simple, so simple I'm a bit skeptical. I'm having trouble finding
any info about zinc formate, is the decomp temp about the same as for acetates?
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SplendidAcylation
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| Quote: Originally posted by Junk_Enginerd | | Quote: Originally posted by Alkoholvergiftung | Dry Destillation of Zinkformiat gives you Methanol.
Or maybe if you mix jest suggar and an lot of pektine at warmer temperaturs it should give you an mix of methanol and ethanol because when you make
alkohol and you have lot of inpuritis (pektine) (shaft, leavs, and the binding mater from appels) you get the blind making kind of alkohol.
You can buy pektine its used as an gelling agent.
I dont have tried this methode its only my theorie. |
So zinc + formic acid, dry it, distill it? Well that sounds very straightforward and simple, so simple I'm a bit skeptical. I'm having trouble finding
any info about zinc formate, is the decomp temp about the same as for acetates? |
You make zinc formate, boil off the water until you're left with the salt, and distil the dry salt, yes.
It's actually not that straight forward when you consider the other possibility of buying methanol 
It costs around £2 per litre here, even if you're just buying a litre.
Anyway, about the zinc formate, I tried this procedure myself, but with the intention of making formaldehyde.
It didn't work, and as far as I could tell, there wasn't much methanol produced either.
Another option might be to buy methylated spirits, and distil off the methanol if possible?
If distillation is not possible, I think that CaCl2 forms a complex with methanol, similar to a hydrate, but it doesn't complex with ethanol.
So, add CaCl2, the solid complex will fall to the bottom, filter it out, and dry distil it to obtain the methanol.
Maybe?
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Eddie Current
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I would figure that formic acid is a lot harder to access than methanol in most places, and I assume that adding methanol to methylated spirits has
been phased out and replaced with denatonium benzoate in most countries.
If methanol access is an issue then it is commonly used as an automotive fuel, and I know it used to be present in fuel blends of nitro fueled hobby
cars, etc.
Methanol can be distilled from wood shavings/H2O at ~78C, and also via bioreaction.
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=72357
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Refinery
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Methanol was distilled from sulfuric acid soaked wood chips in the ancient times. I would in no way use tons of precious oleum for getting some traces
of methanol with all the other crap wood has to give.
You might wanna google around for methanol and if not certain, use the msds as reference. Methanol isn't supposed to be banned in Swe, and if it
happens to be (I wouldn't be surprised, tbh), you could get a business number to circumvent any consumer restrictions.
Methanol is mostly phased out from consumer use due to alcoholics using substitute alcohols and hence dying from methanol poisoning. On the other
hand, it should be cheaply available as a fuel for various kinds of motorsports. I quickly found many nitromethane products containing 25% NM and
balance of methanol and motor oil. I'm not informed about processing NE, so check the safety of it but probably you could vacuum strip these
substituents (64+100C in ntp) into their pure form, and as a bonus, get a stock of NM if you happen to need it.
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