Abstract
DURING an investigation of the radiolysis of methanol vapour Baxendale and Sedgwick1 quantitatively accounted for all product yields in terms of those initial ionization processes observed in the mass spectrometer2, where the important reactions have been shown to be: 
The furher assumed that as a result of reactions such as: 
and: 
the only important neutralization process is: 
The foregoing ion-molecule reactions have been observed in the mass spectrometer by Lindholm3. The species e−, H and CH3OH2+ can therefore be considered the probable precursors of hydrogen. It was further suggested that the methanol molecule formed in reaction (6) is in an excited state and dissociates to molecular hydrogen and formaldehyde.
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References
Baxendale, J. H., and Sedgwick, R. D., Trans. Farad. Soc., 57, 2157 (1961).
Cummings, C. S., and Bleakney, W., Phys. Rev., 58, 787 (1940).
Wilmenius, P., and Lindholm, E., Arkiv Fysik, 21, 97 (1962).
Harteck, P., and Dondes, S., Nucleonics, 14, 66 (1956).
Baxendale, J. H., and Mellows, F. W., J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 83, 4720 (1961).
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MEABURN, G., MELLOWS, F. & REIFFSTECK, A. Production of Hydrogen in the Radiolysis of Methanol Vapour. Nature 204, 1301–1302 (1964). https://doi.org/10.1038/2041301a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/2041301a0
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