Sunday, August 14, 2011

Is it possible to make Methanol from either Ethanol or an other form of alcohol?

Yes, but it's not as simple as chopping the second carbon off of the ethanol. You could perform a dehydration reaction to turn the ethanol into an ethene, then lyse the ethene with ozone and zinc to form two aldehydes. The aldehydes can then by reduced to alcohols (two methanols). An alcohol group could be a small part of a giant molecule; there's not always a 4-step process to bring that down to a methanol. However, most carbohydrates can be pretty easily broken down to methanol by oxidation/reduction and dehydration/elimination reactions such as the ones I listed above.

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