Answer:
Ethanol and its products
Methanol (CH3OH) is the simplest of the alcohols. The next number of the series, called either ethanol or ethyl alcohol (CH3CH2OH), has two carbon atoms. It is most familiar as the active constituent of fermented beverages, but it is also widely used in industry. When intended for human consumption ethyl alcohol is always produced by fermentation of some suitable material to form beer, wine, or distilled spirits of various kinds. For industrial use it is sometimes produced by fermentation from some cheap material, such as molasses, but more often it is made from ethylene by causing it to combine with water under the influence of a catalyst, which may be sulfuric acid or phosphoric acid.
A major industrial use of ethanol is to convert it by oxidation into acetaldehyde (CH3CHO). Ethanol could have been shown in Figure 3 between ethylene and the block containing acetaldehyde and several related chemicals. Ethanol is also used in the preparation of various derivatives, such as ethyl chloride (used in the production of tetraethyllead), in the course of making various plastics, and in the usual further syntheses.
