[Alucard]

Hello,

I am undergraduate student. I will be doing a chemistry experiment tomorrow for my school's chemistry club. The demonstration is the burning of trimethyl borate, which, produces a green flame. Unfortently my school's chemistry club does not have any money and so I found out online that if I burn a small amount of methonal with either sodium borate or boric acid a small amount of trimethyl borate is produced which then immediately burns and produces the green flame, albeit this method is less spectacular.

I am hoping to demonstrate with chemical formulas to the club the chemistry of what is going on both with the methonal and sodium borate burning to produce trimethyl borate4 and also burning methonal with boric acid to produce trimethyl borate. I know the chemical formulas of the reactants. Just not the products. Lastly I also want to know what are the products of burning trimethyl borate. Thank you for your help.

Here is what I do know:

Sodium Borate
Chemical Formula: Na₂B₄O₇·10H₂O or Na₂[B₄O₅(OH)₄]·8H₂O

Boric Acid:
Chemical formula: BH₃O₃
IUPAC: Trihydrooxidoboron
Structure: It appears as three alcohol groups coming off of Boron

Trimethyl Borate
Chemical Formula: C₃H₉BO₃

What I think is happening is that in the case of boric acid and methanol it appears that the hydrogens on the boric acid are being replaced by methyl groups to produce trimethyl borate. However, I have no idea what is the process for with of these reactions.

[AWK]

This reaction is called esterification. The reaction needs a catalyst which is a drop of concentrated sulfuric acid (at least for lead-acid battery).
http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=86298.msg312115#msg312115

For borax you need more acid (for decomposing salt).