Methanol ionization effect

Variation of Ionization Effects of Acetonitrile in 50 50 Methanol/Water (2 1)... 

If the solvent is water or if it contains water, the bimolecular (collision) processes between a neutral substrate and a charged nucleophile (such as nucleophilic acyl addition reactions and nucleophilic displacement with alkyl hahdes) are slower due to solvation effects. On the other hand, water is an excellent solvent for the solvation and separation of ions, so unimolecular processes (which involve ionization to carbocations see Chapter 11, Section 11.6) may be competitive. If the solvent is protic (ethanol, acetic acid, methanol), ionization is possible, but much slower than in water. However, ionization can occiu- if the reaction is given sufficient time to react. In other words, ionization is slow, but not impossible. An example of this statement is the solvolysis of alcohols presented in Chapter 6 (Section 6.4.2). Based on this observation, assume that ionization (unimolecular reactions) will be competitive in water, but not in other solvents, leading to the assumption that bimolecular reactions should be dominant in solvents other than water. This statement is clearly an assumption, and it is not entirely correct because ionization can occur in ethanol, acetic acid, and so on however, the assumption is remarkably accurate in many simple reactions and it allows one to begin making predictions about nucleophilic reactions. 

The difference between the ionization potential of methanol (10.9 e.v.) and the appearance potential of CH2OH + (11.9 e.v.) (4) is sufficiently large that, by controlling the electron energy, Reaction I can be studied to the effective exclusion of Reaction N. 

Similar size effects have been observed in some other electrochemical systems, but by far not in all of them. At platinized platinum, the rate of hydrogen ionization and evolution is approximately an order of magnitude lower than at smooth platinum. Yet in the literature, examples can be found where such a size effect is absent or where it is in the opposite direction. In cathodic oxygen reduction at platinum and at silver, there is little difference in the reaction rates between smooth and disperse electrodes. In methanol oxidation at nickel electrodes in alkaline solution, the reaction rate increases markedly with increasing degree of dispersion of the nickel powders. Such size effects have been reported in many papers and were the subject of reviews (Kinoshita, 1982 Mukerjee, 1990). 

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