ABSTRACT
Methanol is the simplest of alcohols: CH3OH. It is not a hydrocarbon since the hydroxyl group is chemically bonded to the carbon atom. The presence of a carbon-oxygen bond in methanol dramatically al-ters the properties of methanol relative to its hydrocarbon analog, methane (CH4). The most obvious difference between the hydro-carbon CH4 and the alcohol CH3OH is that methane is a gas under normal conditions whereas methanol is a liquid. What is not so obvi-ous is that methanol is highly polar and reactive relative to methane. Methanol readily adsorbs onto reactive metal surfaces under conditions in which methane is completely inert. Even the C-H bonds are slightly weaker in methanol versus methane; the C-H dissociation energy is about 95 kcal/mole1 for methanol compared to 105 kcal/mole2for methane.
