[daisy007]

I want to do a project on which type of wood produces the greatest yield of methanol using the method for destructive distillation. I read that the final product contains a mixture of tar, acetic acid and methanol. I'm having trouble finding how to determine the exact amount of methanol in the mixture of final products?

Do you have any suggestions?

[Enthalpy]

Wood "distillation" is a pyrolysis, conducted hot enough to create compounds that were not present in the wood. So using a lower temperature to recover only the methanol is not an option.

Since you're equipped for distillation, I feel reasonable to distill the products once you've obtained them, and consider that up to 90°C for instance, everything that evaporates is methanol.

The operation is dirty for real. Tar sticks to the walls and is difficult to clean away, so foresee the proper means.

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Not exactly the topic, but:

Could we perhaps pyrolyze some low-value material together with wood to maximize the recovery of better fuel? Tar has a heating value but isnt' convenient. Conduct a sort of vapor cracking simultaneously with the pyrolysis?