Oxalic Acid

[Mike]

If oxalic acid dihydate is rapidly heated on a hotplate to around say
300 deg C in the presence of air at atmospheric pressure, what would
be the resulting products?

If the heating rate was slow but still to the same temperature would
this impact on the resulting products?

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[Madalch]

I would suspect that the resulting products, either way, would be
carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and water vapour.

Although if you heated it slowly enough, you might get anhydrous
oxalic acid before it decomposed.

[Bill Penrose]

On Dec 31 2009, 12:19 pm, Madalch <tress...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I would suspect that the resulting products, either way, would be
> carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and water vapour.

That's a common way to make small amounts of CO without having a
cylinder of it around the lab. The CO2 can be removed with soda lime
if necessary.

DB

[Pelerin Galimatias]

In article <d4fe05fb-c46f-4e39...@u7g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
danger...@gmail.com says...

I once took Organic Qual under Cash B. Pollard at the University
of Florida. Professor Pollard also was State Toxicologist. He once
told us about one of his cases in which a man was found dead in a locked
room. He proved it was murder by finding oxalic acid in the fireplace.
He also told me that the man who taught him Organic Qual was a SOB. I
told him that mine was too and he smiled as he left the lab on a late
Saturday night.

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