Methanol is a chemical that is in liquid form, having the chemical formula CH3OH. It is volatile, colourless, poisonous and flammable. We get Methanol from the distillation of destructive wood, which is chiefly synthesized from hydrogen and carbon monoxide. There are many potential uses for methanol used for organic synthesis as solvent, Fuel and antifreeze.
Several uses of methanol
Methanol generally remains in liquid form at optimum room temperature. It is used as solvent, antifreeze, denaturant form of ethanol, and as fuel, which helps produce biodiesel via reaction of transesterification. As there are many toxic properties of methanol, it is mostly used as an additive denaturant for manufacturing ethanol in industries. Methanol is considered wood alcohol as earlier it was produced as a byproduct of the wood’s destructive distillation process.
How Is it produced?
Modern ethanol is produced from Cooper, which is known to be a catalyst that operates at low temperature. ICI developed Low-pressure ethanol in 1960, which was based on Johnson Matthey technology, the leading licensor of developing methanol technology. For the production of Methanol, natural gas was widely and economically used as a feedstock. Coal is also getting popular as a feedstock for producing Methanol, especially in China. These are some of the mature technologies that are available for methanol production and biomass gasification.
The most commonly used laboratory solvent is Methanol which is especially useful for UV/VIS and HPLC spectroscopy for its low UV cutoff. A maximum amount of methanol is converted for manufacturing some other chemical such as 40% of methanol were converted into formaldehyde. And this chemical was then used for making other products such as plywood’s, plastics, permanent textiles press, explosives etc.
Gasoline was developed by Mobil, who converted Methanol into gasoline for vehicles. Many countries like New Zealand and the United States consumed a large amount of Me that producing additive gasoline of methyl tert butyl ether which was also widely used in other parts of the world. For using Methanol as direct fuel, biodiesel was formed from the transesterification of triglycerides. Dimethyl ether was another chemical derivative of methanol that replaced the use of CFC as an aerosol propellant spray and acetic acid. Dimethyl ether was liquified into petroleum gas for cooking, home heating and transportation fuel by replacing transportation diesel.
Methanol is also used on a limited basis as internal fuel combustion engines as it is not the same as gasoline. It is more difficult to ignite methanol than gasoline which helps in producing one-eighth of heat. Methanol is also used as a traditional denaturant which is known to be methylated spirit.
