elfspice (Hive Bee)
04-20-04 14:27
No 501871
      practicality     

My objection to all this talk of high pressure and gas phase and electro - catalytic chemistry is simple practicality.

for the price one scould build the pressure bomb or hell, even just getting the Pt electrodes, you could have a small glass still and several kilos of oxalic acid and formic acid and the synthesis is facile.

why would you risk blowing yourself up with hydrogen when there is MUCH simpler ways to do it?
 
 
 
 
    Osmium
(Stoni's sexual toy)
04-20-04 22:14
No 501971
      > If you want more information on this...     

> If you want more information on this byzantine and ineffective
> way for producing formic acid, use Google and the search function
> at espacenet but dont ask me.

Thanks for your help, I knew we could count on you O.

> My objection to all this talk of high pressure and gas phase and
> electro - catalytic chemistry is simple practicality.

Correct.

BUSH/CHENEY 2004! After all, it ain't my country!
 
 
 
 
    ning
(acetaminophanatic)
04-21-04 10:59
No 502097
      Hm.     

Despite the vitriol flying back and forth, it's an interesting problem on an industrial scale--what IS the most efficient way to make formic acid?

Lye and CO are cheap & easy, but as the above post said, you need an acid (I guess usually sulfuric) to decompose the formed formate. This is wasteful, and produces waste, which you must pay to get rid of.

A more elegent method would involve decomposing the sodium formate with HCl, forming NaCl, which could bee reformed by electrolysis into Cl2 and NaOH, the Cl2 beeing burned with hydrogen to produce the HCl again. This would then effectively amount to a large contiuous electrolysis operation, and I can easily see why industry would prefer to simply produce formic acid by direct CO2 / H2 synthesis. On the whole, it would probably be a lot more efficient than making lye, acid, etc.

On the other hand, for the process that needs HCl, seeing as how many processes that use chlorine for oxidation or chlorination end up using only half of it, and producing HCl as a byproduct, the aforementioned process would give a useful way to regenerate chlorine in an industrial cycle.

I also wonder whether dehydrogenation of methanol over zinc/copper to formaldehyde followed by canizzaro reaction and separation would bee a useful method. AFAIK, methanol can bee produced from synthesis gas. The advantage of this process is that it would need no electricity, and would produce in variable, controllable quantities, hydrogen, methanol, formaldehyde, and formic acid, all valuable industrial chemicals.

I still say the coolest friend to have is the one that owns the nitroalkane factory ^^

I've been chased by both cops and robbers. So what does that make me?
 
 
 
 
    Osmium
(Stoni's sexual toy)
04-21-04 12:21
No 502109
      Industrial HCOOH production     

MeOH + CO ---[basic catalyst, P, T]---> HCOOMe

HCOOMe + H2O ------> MeOH + HCOOH
HCOOMe + NH3 ------> HCONH2 + H2O
HCONH2 + H2O --[H2SO4]--> HCOOH

BUSH/CHENEY 2004! After all, it ain't my country!
 
 
 
 
    elfspice
(Hive Bee)
04-21-04 17:01
No 502154
      synth from gas     

CO2 + H2 -unknown reduction system-> HCOOH

now that would bee a nice reaction if it could be done at atmospheric or something but i doubt it. yes, i realise that someone's already described a method that is more or less that but it's high pressure catalytic.

When one talks about economics of production one has to bear in mind volumes and duration. One can produce some quantity of material with a production cost of X, but to get that one first invests 1000x X, and thus it will not become economic until one has profited from the process to the extent of offsetting the initial large investment.

If you are unlikely to produce more than 100kg of formic acid in your whole lifetime i doubt that one can justify that startup cost. Of course, it opens up a lot of interesting options having the ability to run high pressure reactions (let's not forget supercritical extractions either).
 
 
 
 
    carbocation
05-01-04 07:31
      How about distilling ants? ;-)
(Rated as: redundant)