Talk:Methanol/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Methanol-IMFs

I came here looking for information on the types of IMFs that hold Methanol molecules together. Maybe something could be added in the future.

The reason IMFs are not mentioned on this page is because they are the same in methanol as in any other alcohol. —Keenan Pepper 15:38, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Is methanol better disinfectant then ethanol

Can anybody tell me: Is methanol better disinfectant then ethanol?

Not really and given its toxicity is not something that you would want to keep around as the risk exceeds the benefit.Bdolcourt 16:43, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Blindness (permanent?)

Is the blindness caused by methanol permanent, or does vision return after a sub-lethal dose has been fully excreted? --69.157.243.35 23:28, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

See this missive from Cambridge University: "Patients with visual symptoms may develop irreversible visual impairment even with aggressive intervention." Karl Hahn (T) (C) 14:22, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
The blindness that methanol causes can be permanent if it damages the eye and/or the optic nerve

Conversion of methanol to ethanol

Question: Can methanol be converted to ethanol and if so is it cost effecient? uses of methanol and ethanol as laboratory reagents

Yes, it can. However it requires some fairly aggressive and potentially expensive chemistry to do it. Given that ethanol is made from fermenting sugars, it is unlikely to be cost effective.Bdolcourt 16:43, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
You could oxidize methanol to formaldehyde for one carbon, and for the other, convert methanol to methyllithium via methyl bromide. Combining these gives lithium ethoxide, which you would quench with acid. The result would be stoichiometric quantities of waste salts, and also, you would use stoichiometric quantities of lithium ( per kg) and hydrobromic acid, both of which are produced with expensive electrolysis. The reagents and the reaction itself would be extremely (this time, the word "extremely" really is justified) hazardous. So, all sorts of things can be done, but there's no point in most of them. --Vuo 06:58, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Minor Edit

I have deleted these two sentences: "This led to consumer and media problems and the last time out of methanol blends. However, there is still a great deal of interest in using methanol as a neat (unblended) fuel." I have no idea what "the last time out of methanol blends" means, and there is no context to justify discussion of the possibility that pure ("neat") methanol might be a useful fuel. Douglas Barber 21:38, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Toxicity in crystals?

When a substance dissolved in methanol crystalises as the methanol is evaporated, do these crystals contain methanol? And what can be done to be absolutely sure no methanol is left? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.67.96.13 (talk) 16:48, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

You can dry the crystals and get rid of the methanol. I imagine some traces may remain occluded in the crystals, but not enough to be significantly toxic (unless you plan to eat large quantities of the crystals!) --Itub 09:48, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
What would you mean by "large" :p. I guess I'll tell you right away, a dutch friend of a friend is going to get into psychedelic mushroom growing, and he was wondering about storing them (he really doesn't want to be a dealer), so he looked into "psilocybin extraction". Methanol seamed the best solvent, but he wants to make sure none of it is left in the crystals. 17:44, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Gas chromatography is typically used to detect methanol. --Vuo 11:20, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
I feel torn between not wanting to appear to condone illicit drug use and the notion that information should be shared. Two points. 1) Those who would assume the risks of imbibing the output of your kitchen chemist friend will probably ingest less than 100 mg of it. If only a small fraction of that is methanol, they would be ingesting much less than that of methanol, which would be roughly one thousandth of the minimum lethal dose. Note that methanol is not a cumulative poison. 2) The Merck Index indicates that both water or methanol would make a suitable solvent for both extraction and recrystallization of this stuff. It also says that crystals from water melt at a different temperature than crystals from methanol. So there is a possibility that crystals from methanol are an alcoholate form -- that is that methanol might be incorporated as a part of the crystal structure. But if so, you would expect most of the methanol to boil away when the crystals are melted. This also suggests that after recrystallizing from methanol, your friend could dissolve the result in boiling water and recrystallize again. FYI: Merck also says of psilocybin, "Caution: May produce serious psychological disturbances." Karl Hahn (T) (C) 03:10, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Not To Be Confused With....?

Not going against anyone's ideas but who could possibly get confused with Methanol and Menthol?!! Kind of funny really. -Peace Out!- mÆniac Ask! 19:24, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

The words look similar in print if you are not paying attention, I guess. Or maybe certain politicians could pronounce one when they mean the other. ;-) --16:55, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Methyl Hydrate wrongly redirected

I came to look up methyl hydrate, which is a potential energy source located on the sea floor. I was redirected to methanol but there is no discussion on methyl hydrate here...so why was it redirected? It should be a separate article. --Bobkeyes (talk) 00:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean Methane clathrate? :Ben (talk) 02:50, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
==== I would "second" this call for correcting the main article... but I was (partly) wrong... see below...====
... my university course in organic chemistry was a while ago, and in normal conversation I would be "sure" that the redirection is "just WRONG", but can't be sufficiently sure to mess with the Wikipedia page... but, please, someone with the right qualifications consider? Feel free to tell me I'm wrong! I think Methane clathrate is exactly what most people mean by methyl/ methane hydrate/ hydride, and believe all of the names valid, if not "PC". If someone KNOWS this is right, perhaps some re-directs should be set up for people coming across the other names?? this, after all, is an important chemical, not something obscure. There are significant deposits in the Carribean. A slight drop in ocean levels, as might arise if the Gulf Stream gets "switched off" (See Shutdown of thermohaline circulation) and the arctic gets cold, accumulates water on Greenland etc, would reduce the pressure over the Carribean deposits... leading to their breakdown and the release of large amounts of methane into the atmosphere.... leading to more global warming. Isn't the science of climate change fascinating??... Heating leads to cooling leads to heating! (See clathrate gun hypothesis) Tkbwik (talk) 14:29, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't think all of those terms are valid. At best they are ambiguous.
Methyl hydride is H3C-H, i.e. methane. Methane hydrate would be CH4·H2O or CH4·xH2O, the latter of which is at least consistent with a methane clathrate cluster.
Methyl hydrate could mean a combination of the methyl cation, [CH3]+, and a water molecule, giving methanol protonated on oxygen, [H3C-OH2]+.
Ben (talk) 16:27, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
P.S. from Tkbwik: Thank you Ben! And thanks also to the Wikipedia page about hydrates. ("Hydrate" is used differently in organic and inorganic chemistry, I've learnt.) I am now better informed, and further thanks, Ben, for the "See..." you put on the methanol article, to get people to where they might be wanting to go.

Molecular formula

Sounds to me it should be CH4O, not CH3OH. --193.49.97.126 (talk) 14:54, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the molecular formula is CH4O. In this case (but not for all molecules), CH4O is also the empirical formula. CH3OH is a text formula that attempts to indicate the connectivity of the molecule. Ben (talk) 15:06, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Use in photography as a slide cleaner

I came to "Methanol" to find out what it is after seeing that it is the main ingredient in a common 35 mm slide cleaner called PEC-12. See datasheet: http://www.photosol.com/documents/msds_pec12.pdf.

This use possibly should be included.

Also, can anyone enlighten me as to the effect of n-butyl acetate in a slide cleaner? It is listed as the second ingredient. Is it likely to be a major ingredient, or a minor addition?

As a solvent methanol can be used in many cleaners. I won't list this particular use. n-Butyl acetate is likely an odorant. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 07:48, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Methanol Production Section

The article's "production" section has absolutely no mention of the production of Methanol. It only covers the production of syngas from methanol. How did this happen? (66.26.240.67 (talk) 15:38, 15 May 2010 (UTC))

Toxicity

I see Methanol is toxic, but is it also carciogenic in small amounts in the environment? (ie: water table pollution)

Methanol is not classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic. Small amounts of methanol are actually found naturally in some fruits and other foods. Maximus Rex 02:07, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
Be careful though - just because something occurs naturally in fruits, that doesn't mean that cannot be carcinogenic! Certain cyanide compounds occur naturally in apple pips, but they're still carcinogenic! 217.198.33.252 (talk) 12:46, 21 September 2010 (UTC)
"Over the course of several days, atmospheric methanol is oxidized by oxygen and sunlight to carbon dioxide. " - presumably this also gives off hydrogen... is this where some/all the hydrogen in the atmosphere comes from? (I know there is very little due to its escape velocity). Need a chemist to update the article. --/Mat 15:46, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)
When a molecule is photochemically degraded in the atmosphere, the eventual fate of its hydrogen atoms is (usually) water vapor. Shimmin
I was once told that very little hydrogen actually gets away, as ozone will oxidize it readily. Any made on the surface of the earth would probably not make it throught the stratosphere. So I'm told anyway. Vertigre
Can anyone check the figures given that 1ml causes blindness and 4ml kills? According to the link below it can take 'as little as' 4ml to 10ml to cause blindness, not just a flat 1ml as the wikipedia article states. Also, people have recovered (ie not died!) from up to 500ml to 600ml so 4ml is unlikely to kill I feel. http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/pim335.htm#4.%20USES/HIGH%20RISK%20CIRCUMSTANCES%20OF%20POISONING

Dubious

>They also introduced the word methylene to organic chemistry, forming it from Greek methy = "wine" + hȳlē = wood (patch of trees). Its intended origin was "alcohol made from wood (substance)", but it has Greek language errors: wrong Greek word used for the French word bois = "wood"; wrong Greek word combining order influenced by French usage.

Well, it's true that the Greek word hyle can mean "wood" in the sense of "forest", and this seems to be the first meaning that dictionaries list... However, as noted in the WP page hyle, this Greek word has been used in the sense of "matter" at least since the days of Aristotle. The Perseus Greek Word Study website [1] gives details about usage of this word in Greek texts, with citations -- it's used in the sense of "forest", but also in the sense of "timber", and more generally "stuff", "material", or "matter". Did the chemists who coined the term methylene mean "alcohol made from wood" or was the intended meaning "alcoholic stuff"? Kalidasa 777 (talk) 05:34, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Carbon neutrality

Carbon neutrality means generally that you don't put any more carbon into the air. Burning wood is carbon-neutral (so long as the net amount of forest is kept the same), since the wood got all it's carbon out of the air in the first place. Burning fossil fuel is not carbon-neutral, since it increases carbon in the air. The methods of producing methanol discussed would use carbon that either came from the air to begin with, or else would have been added to the air anyway (making methanol just a temporary storage form of carbon). The point is that methanol is not like fossil fuel. It doesn't contribute to CO2 increase. SBHarris 02:49, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

But you contradict yourself. Plants take Carbon Dioxide out of the air, get buried, become coal (and oil after a fashion), and then we mine that plant carbon and burn it. (Well Graphite is apparently inorganic but who burns graphite?) Most Methanol is produced by reaction of coal or natural gas or oil with water at high temps to make synthesis gas (H2 + CO) then Methanol. And before you say burning wood is carbon-neutral try using your brain. "firewood" is not 100% of the tree that you see. About 50% of the tree itself is below ground, and believe it or not that underground portion rots away when the tree dies and guess what: it makes Carbon Dioxide. One of the world's biggest sources of carbon pollution, besides "I could care less" Chinese, is deforestation of the Amazon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shjacks45 (talk • contribs)

Methanol Toxicity Contradiction

The beginning of the article (first paragraph) states that "Drinking 1 ml will cause blindness, and as little as 5 ml will cause death," however in the "toxicity" section the article states that "If ingested, as little as 10ml can cause permanent blindness by destruction of the optic nerve. The usual fatal dose is 100–125 ml (4 fl oz)." Could somebody verify the claims and correct this contradiction? Tpingt (talk) 14:22, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

LD50 is 2-7 g/kg in the monkey (http://epa.gov/chemfact/s_methan.txt). So for a 80kg person, that would be 160-560 g (200 - 700ml). SO 100-125ml is maybe a bit low, but not too far out.  Ronhjones  (Talk) 23:04, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
How can be possible that the NFPA classification in Health is 1 for Methanol and 2 for Ethanol? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ivlianco (talk • contribs) 22:24, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Corrected to 3 for methanol per MSDS pages. Materialscientist (talk) 22:38, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
I've reverted it back to "1" after reviewing several MSDSs. My research is superficial, so I can only speculate why. Commercial ethanol is denatured. Absolute ethanol often contains benzene due to the need to break up the azeotrope in distillation.Novangelis (talk) 23:09, 5 July 2011 (UTC)
Methanol itself is relatively non-toxic, its metabolites are what are toxic. 98.111.142.68 (talk) 21:50, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Modern household ethanol is not denatured with methanol. Some methanol may be added as a deterrent, but the bad taste comes from other additives. Denatorium (trade name) has a bad taste. Pyridine is still common in some countries. A color code is added, e.g. purple dye, for various additives. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.244.72.137 (talk) 02:07, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Methanol from freezing?

I heard somewhere that if cider is frozen in an attempt to concentrate the alcohol to make applejack, methanol can result. Is this an actual possibility? Where would it even come from? 71.233.255.207 (talk) 15:53, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Unlikely but not impossible. eth/meth ratio should normally stay the same. You'd need to use dry ice or similar to get down to required temps. Freeze the meth at -97C, and let the still liquid ethanol (MP -114C) drain out. I understand applejack is done by reducing to just under 0C so most water is solid. The liquid draw off is the applejack. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.244.247.152 (talk) 09:52, 9 June 2013 (UTC)
We analyzed Pear Wine (Pears and Apples are interrelated) and GC showed 10% ethanol and 1% methanol. Denatured is typically ethanol with 10% methanol. We found that that was attributed to transesterification during fermentation. Note that Applejack was made in Northern US in Winter was subject commonly to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 C) not often as low as -60. Note that Dry Ice melts at -78 C. Because alcohol dehydrogenase has a much higher affinity for ethanol than methanol, even a higher percentage of methanol would be blocked; would be excreted unchanged. Further, Acetaldehyde dehydrogenase is inhibited by ethanal but formaldehyde dehydrogenase not inhibited by its substrate. Shjacks45 (talk) 00:31, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Methanol Corrosiveness?

I think methanol is also corrosive. I recall an engineer friend complaining that his engine parts don't tend to survive with methonal.

Methanol is not corrosive. When burned in an engine not designed for it, though, some of its combustion products can attack engine parts. Shimmin 11:31, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)
I disagree. Don't have a reference off hand, but I recall reading that there have been experiments with cars which can burn either gasoline or M85 (85% methanol, 15% gasoline). They required the fuel system to be upgraded so the methanol would not corrode it. The gasoline was necessary to start the engine when cold. pstudier 20:31, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Methanol does etch the more active metals (Mg, Zn, Al ...), but iron, many steels, glass, wood, and almost all plastics withstand it. Would you then call methanol corrosive? Would you call water corrosive because it promotes rust? Hydrogen gas corrosive because it weakens steel? Most fluids will adversely affect some solids. A blanket statement like X is corrosive suggests one will get a severe chemical burn if one spills it on oneself, which simply isn't the case. Now, a statement like X corrodes such-and-such a material is an entirely different discussion. Shimmin 03:32, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)
High methanol-content fuels can attacks the seals (gaskets) in an engine, although they shouldn't attack the metalwork. Physchim62 21:04, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
No. Alcohol is hygroscopic, accumulates water from the air in your fuel tank. Rust forms, rust is an abrasive not good for you engine parts. Although methanol can be created easily from synthesis gas (Carbon or Hydrocarbons, and Water at high temps), ethanol via ethylene is just as simple. Ethanol is usually considered miscible with gasoline (will separate if atmospheric moisture is absorbed) but methanol is not. The corrosion thing is misconceived as most alcohol fueled high performance vehicles are so fueled to minimize usage of air/oxidant therefore higher compression ratio; the addition of Nitromethane is derigeur in these type of vehicles. Nitromethane will break down into acidic oxides of Nitrogen which is probably the corrosion cause. Nitromethane itself is acidic, and reacts with Aluminum. Rubber/plastic that do not dissolve in gasoline will dissolve/soften in ketone or ester solvents and nitromethane has that solvent profile. Ethanol has the same solvent profile as methanol and the redneck wisdom of ethanol eating fuel system seals is, after many years of ethanol usage, just an urban myth. Another issue with methanol fuel (same as ethanol) is it boils well below gasoline (and in a hot engine can vaporize in the fuel injectors). (In racing that might be a good thing.)Shjacks45 (talk) 00:54, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Inconsistency: aluminum corrosion

The article currently says:

  • One of the drawbacks of methanol as a fuel is its corrosivity to some metals, including aluminium. Methanol, although only a weak acid, attacks the oxide coating that normally protects the aluminium from corrosion:/ 6CH3OH + 2Al → 2Al3+ + 6CH3O− + 3H2

Is it me or does that reaction have nothing to do with the oxide coating? Melchoir 22:46, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Any seepage of methanol through the oxide coating will cause corrosion. The difference between attack by methanol and attack by water is that aluminum methoxide is soluble in methanol, whereas aluminum oxide is insoluble in water: hence the corrosion rapidly stops with water, but continues with methanol. Physchim62 (talk) 15:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I believe that methanol and water both react with aluminum. With water, the reaction stops as the aluminum oxide product forms an impenetrable coating on the 'pure' aluminum. With methanol, the reaction will continue since the aluminum methoxide product is soluble in methanol (where aluminum oxide was not soluble in water). Isn't this a passivation reaction? Maybe link to that article is in order (where it does talk some about aluminum passivation). Bennybp 01:21, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
No, first Methanol is not acidic: (pKa water = 15.7 > pH 7; MeOH = 15.5). (Vinegar, 5% Acetic Acid, IS acidic, pH 4.5. Put cut up, no oxide on cut suface, Aluminum foil into a small cup of Vinegar.) Most Aluminum parts would be anodized or otherwise surface treated. Anodizing is done in a Sulfuric Acid bath. We have done reductions using Aluminum metal and Alcohols but the reaction never begins until you add Mercuric Chloride to allow the alcohol to break through the oxide layer and react with the Aluminum amalgum. Even finely powdered Aluminum (flash powder) that catches fire with a match or spark does not react with alcohol. Wrong also on the water part. Water reacts with Aluminum to form Aluminum Hydroxide which is porous and gelatinous allowing free flow of ions to attack the Aluminum surface. Yet if I put a freshly machined piece of Aluminum into water it doesn't dissolve before my eyes. And Methanol has only a fraction of the activity of water. High temperature gas phase reaction maybe, but there is no methanol solvent in that case. WWII piston engined fighter aircraft used methanol and water injection to boost power, the limiting factor was engine overheating. Most Aluminum engined vehicles have sleeves of a more refractory alloy (Aluminum melts at 650 C) inside of the cylinders. Shjacks45 (talk) 01:57, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

EROEI of methanol production

I have tried to find clear EROEI estimations for methanol production. For example: methanol produced from waste wood. It seems terribly difficult to find reliable sources. Nikolas Ojala (talk) 23:48, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Redirect from carbinol

So, what is carbinol?

From dictionaries on the web:

"Any aromatic or fatty alcohol formed by substituting one, two, or three hydrocarbon groups for hydrogen in methanol."

"1. See methanol. 2. An alcohol derived from methanol."

"Methanol; any alcohol bearing a homologous relation to methanol, as diethyl carbinol."

"1. (obsolete, organic chemistry) The compound methanol. (obsolete, organic chemistry) Any substituted methanol."

"Methyl alcohol, CH3OH; -- also, by extension, any one in the homologous series of paraffine alcohols of which methyl alcohol is the type."

"Methyl alcohol, CH3OH. The name is used almost exclusively in designating derivatives of methyl alcohol: as, triphenyl carbinol, (C6H5)3COH."

178.38.111.13 (talk) 07:46, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Methanol

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Methanol's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "PGCH":

  • From Formamide: NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards. "#0295". National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
  • From Phenol: NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards. "#0493". National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
  • From Cyanogen: NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards. "#0161". National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 08:13, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

methanol NFPA fire diamond health hazard

I have doubts that methanol is only a 1 on the health hazard part of the NFPA 704. Ethanol is rated a 2 and acetic acid is rated a 3, yet these two substances are much less toxic than methanol as far as i know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skairim (talk • contribs) 19:33, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

@Skairim: An msds gives the value as '1'. I believe the number is more for contact / inhalation than ingestion. Note that it does have a poison warning as well. Wikipedia uses wp:reliable sources, not editor's judgments. Jim1138 (talk) 08:32, 8 March 2015 (UTC)

Production from carbon dioxide using sunlight and copper oxide catalyst

I wonder why this section was removed from the article. Was that an accident? ––Nikolas Ojala (talk) 15:48, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. The CO route goes via CO2 and in fact often uses a mixture. I think that basic info is in there. Leave a note if you see a gap. We are trying to keep out recent narrow literature per [{WP:SECONDARY]], esp for such large area. Any sunlight route is of no commercial value.--Smokefoot (talk) 16:03, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
Here is the text that you removed: "Methanol has been generated directly from carbon dioxide in solution using copper oxide (CuO) nanorods coated by cuprous oxide (Cu2O) and energy from (simulated) sunlight. The process operated with 95% electrochemical efficiency and is claimed to be scalable to industrial size." A reference was also included. It is obvious that the removed text describes a new way of using solar energy to produce methanol directly. Sunlight is the energy source in this case. No other energy was required. The point is that the described method may become a practical and economically sound way to utilize solar energy in methanol production without extra energy conversions. ——Nikolas Ojala (talk) 17:28, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
I agree that it is nifty, but there are a zillion methods that might become useful, but Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. See WP:CRYSTALBALL. I hope that this technology clicks too but that is not the basis for notability. Do you think I should add the other thousands of references to MeOH to this article? Each of which you can be darned sure the authors think is hot result and going to change the world? Me either. So we try to stick to digested sources per WP:SECONDARY and WP:NOTNEWS. The process of inclusion of hot new results is a big issue, agreed. --Smokefoot (talk) 18:38, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
The offered reference text was good according to WP:SECONDARY as it was an article on Gizmag and not the original paper, which would have been a primary source. I also noticed that there are many more secondary sources available. The desired fact that Wikipedia is not a newspaper was not violated either, because the removed section did not concentrate in the event of the scientific discover but rather in the technology that was shown to work. If the notability was not clear from the Gizmag article, how about an article on Science Daily: "And what could be better in Texas than to use the sunlight for methanol generation from carbon dioxide?" ——Nikolas Ojala (talk) 20:16, 25 November 2015 (UTC)
Ni Nick, thanks for the note. Maybe I am off base, in which case I will reinstate (or you or Stevens can). Gizmag is not my ideal for a secondary source, or even ScienceDaily since they are gullible newsy things that select candy vs good stuff (in my prudish worldview). here are the data:
  • methanol: 300,000 reports, patents etc, 19442 mention nano, of which 547 mention nanorod.
  • in 2015: 13367 reports, patents etc. 90 mentioning nanorods.
  • of those in 2015: 78 books and reviews on methanol.
It is the immensity of this literature that worries me a lot. And the implication that you or I have god-like insights to select a paper out of this haystack. Its an old dilemma. People not in this area always under-estimate the scale of the published literature, which invites capriciousness, if not intended that way. --Smokefoot (talk) 20:33, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment

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Methanol production by anaerobic bacteria

Are there any citations for this? I did some preliminary research and couldn't find anything about this. --vaeiou 01:31, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Answer: From what I know, no. There are no Methanol producing bacteria. There are Methane producing bacteria though. Ericeleven (talk) 22:51, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

Use as fuel in internal combustion engines

Methanol's most frequent use in ICE power can be found in hobby and sport applications. Drag racing, some oval track racing, monster trucks are examples of manned racing craft that burn a significant portion of methanol in their fuel blends if not running on pure methanol. Glow fuel, used in RC vehicles of all types, uses methanol as a base, with nitromethane, lubricants, and additives added to tailor each fuel blend to the specific uses it is intended for. I feel the article failing to mention this is a bit of an omission, it's not an insignificant usage and it's highly likely that someone's seen an example of an engine running on methanol at some point in their lives, whether in person or on TV/the internet, and as such I feel it should be slid into the main article. 2600:1702:E00:FC60:4981:F027:5170:82F3 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:53, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Coronavirus

This should go here, just as a US fatality from self-medication is mentioned in the chloroquine article: https://news.yahoo.com/uks-johnson-virus-positive-outbreaks-054619619.html

"As different populations strive for cures, Iranian media reported nearly 300 people have been killed and more than 1,000 sickened by ingesting methanol as a purported safeguard against the disease."

23.121.191.18 (talk) 06:24, 28 March 2020 (UTC)

IMPORTANT: Someone Made the Wording of this Article Intentionally Dangerous

The second and fourth paragraphs of the section Toxicity were worded in a way that was dangerously misleading if someone didn't understand the previous sections of the article or hadn't read them carefully; the wording made it sound like methanol was only toxic for causing Central Nervous System depression and was only as dangerous as ethyl drinking alcohol.

I have fixed the parts of the article like this that I noticed, but there may be more.

Quite frankly, it looks like someone wrote the article that way on purpose to try and cause readers harm; I am completely shocked by this. We should look through the previous versions of the article to figure out who wrote it, and make sure they haven't made similar edits to other articles. --67.7.225.51 (talk) 06:08, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

If you can contain your outrage, please explain the problem. -- Smokefoot (talk) 12:55, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
Is there no better way to word it? People reading the article thinking they can get drunk off methanol are going to look at the section 'Toxicity' first, then see it compared to ethanol as causing Central Nervous System depression. How else can it be worded? I don't know how. -- 67.3.26.86 (talk) 21:01, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
How many people do you think are running around in possession of methanol that are just dying to try drinking it to get drunk (and apparently have no access to regular booze, yet have access too methanol)? This doesn't strike me as a very common problem. Firejuggler86 (talk) 03:14, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Denatured alcohol, past/present tense

Dmacks, you misunderstand what this paragraph is attempting to report - not unreasonably so, and the latter part of the paragraph could probably be rewritten to be clearer. Denatured alcohol is still produced: just not for the purpose of adding it to products that wouldn't normally have it in order to discourage people from drinking them (as was done during prohibition). That doesnt make the first part of the paragragh past tense, though, and denatured alcohol is not only produced as an intentional poison. Firejuggler86 (talk) 03:06, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Well, actually, it would appear that this is what the purpose of denaturing alcohol is, even to this day. Sorta. During prohibition it was done to prevent people from drinking, at all. Now it is done so that alcohol for industrial applications may be sold without the taxes that are imposed on alcohol that is drunk. And also I suppose, by extension, to prevent possible alcohol tax circumvention as a result of allowing the sale untaxed pure ethanol for industrial application. Firejuggler86 (talk) 03:31, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
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