Cellulose methanol-formaldehyde reaction

Direct Oxidation. Direct oxidation of petroleum hydrocarbons has been practiced on a small scale since 1926 methanol, formaldehyde, and acetaldehyde are produced. A much larger project (29) began operating in 1945. The main product of the latter operation is acetic acid, used for the manufacture of cellulose acetate rayon. The oxidation process consists of mixing air with a butane-propane mixture and passing the compressed mixture over a catalyst in a tubular reaction furnace. The product mixture includes acetaldehyde, formaldehyde, acetone, propyl and butyl alcohols, methyl ethyl ketone, and propylene oxide and glycols. The acetaldehyde is oxidized to acetic acid in a separate plant. Thus the products of this operation are the same as those (or their derivatives) produced by olefin hydration and other aliphatic syntheses. 

By far the simplest possible model system for cellulose is the reaction of monovalent alcohols such as methanol with formaldehyde. This system is present in aqueous phase in commercial formalin solutions that are made by partial oxidation of methanol. These... 

The purpose of this chapter is to describe exploratory 13C-NMR studies of formaldehyde-cellulose reaction model systems. Solid state NMR spectra are still comparatively broad and do not reveal as much detail as solution spectra Ql). Furthermore, solid state NMR studies are still cumbersome, ana since no references are available on solid state studies of cellulose-formaldehyde interactions, we conducted an analysis of model systems for cellulose that are water soluble. This paper reports reactions of formaldehyde with methanol, ethyIenegIycoI, some seIect sugars, and ceI Iobi ose. 

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