Billusa99 wrote:
Slow down... Wait a minute on the "made from petroleum" quote. It does not matter where it's from!
"For many years, the bulk of commercial acetic acid was produced by the oxidation of ethanol. Today, most industrial production of acetic acid is by the Monsanto process, in which carbon monoxide reacts with methanol under the influence of a rhodium complex catalyst at 180°C and pressures of 30–40 atm."
See:
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/Ac ... cAcid.htmlMethanol and ethanol are alcohols and the primary way of producing ethanol is via biological feedstocks (grain, corn, etc.). Methanol is mainly produced via a multi-step process starting w/ the stream forming of natural gas. It is a clean process.
Unless the label says that it's made from apple cider (not just 'apple flavored'), the acetic acid product most likely is derived from petroleum. For foliar feeding, it does make a difference becaue of the trace mineral content of the cider product. For weed killing, there hasn't been much choice but to use the petro-based acetics. The higher molarity products typically are drawn from the glacial acetic production stream or are derived from diluting the glacial end product; they also could be by-products from other petrochemical plant processes. It's not extremely easy/economical to get 20% acetic acid (which is maybe 4M), from apple cider, compared to taking it from the methane stream. Of course, the cider stream is a renewable process and the methane stream isn't.
I suppose the petroleum-based production monopoly could change as more corn-based fermentation ethanol plants come on line, but the change to using plant-derived ethanol as a feedstock for large scale acetic acid production likely would depend on the economics. We're not there yet. Using bio-mass based methanol for acetic acid may be even further off. I wonder how they would label vinegar produced from ethanol made from GMO corn.