cnidocyte - 13-9-2010 at 14:21
I wanna put a bit of my organic chem theory into practice and I wanna start with oxidizing alcohols since methanol, ethanol and isopropanol are cheap
and OTC. I wanna make the oxidizing agent myself from OTC compounds but I don't know what would be the easiest oxidizer to make. I wanna avoid
chromates and dichromates since they're so toxic. I could make KMnO4 that from MnO2. Would that be the simplest oxidizing agent to make or is there an
easier one to make?
mnick12 - 13-9-2010 at 16:02
Well it all depends on what you have available as well as what you want. My question is, what is your desired product? There are lots of
possibilities, for example ethanol can be fully oxidized to acetic acid in a number of different ways. But with a milder oxidizing agent ethanol would
be oxidized to acetaldehyde. So are you interested in aldehydes carboxylic acids, or perhaps both?
Now an alcohol such as isopropanol would not be oxidized to an alehyde, instead you would end up with a ketone (acetone). So in terms of economy some
things are much cheaper to buy (formaldehyde,formic acid, acetic acid, acetone), the only one which may be worth pursuing is acetaldehyde. But thats
your decision to make.
So mabe a good idea would be decide exactly what your target chemical is, then ask for help making that particular chemical.