Extraordinary Properties of Alcohols from the Homologous Series of Methanol

Abstract

Non-trivial properties of thermodynamic quantities such as the density, the critical and triple point temperatures, and their ratio, as well as the optical and dielectric properties, have been analyzed for primary alcohols from the methanol series. The aim is to reveal relationships among their values measured at the same temperatures for alcohols with different ordinal numbers m’s in the methanol series. It is shown that the non-monotonic character of the temperature dependences of alcohol densities is associated with methanol rather than ethanol, as may seem at first glance. The critical temperature of methanol also deviates from the quasilinear dependence of the critical alcohol temperatures on m. With the growing m, the ratio between the critical and triple-point temperatures for alcohols is shown to tend to the corresponding value for water. Simple linear dependences of the electronic and effective static polarizabilities of alcohol molecules on m are established. The transverse and longitudinal components of the polarizability tensor for alcohol molecules are found. The dipole moments of the closest neighbor molecules in the alcohols are proved to anticorrelate, i.e. to orient in opposite directions.