Hi.

Is there any reaction or chain of reactions to obtain any alcohol (propanol, isopropyl, metanol, butanol ...) from calcium carbonate ?

 

Miguel

To be honest, there might exist a way, but I doubt anyone would want to attempt to do this, as the alcohols you listed are more easily obtained/purchased rather than synthesized.

This is probably cheating but it used to be common practice.

Roast the carbonate with coke in an arc furnace to get calcium carbide then cool and add water to get acetylene.

(If using coke is thought of as cheating then I think you can use hydrogen to reduce CO2 (obtained by heating or acidification of the carbonate) to give carbon monoxide which you can disproportionate to CO2 and Carbon).

 

React the acetylene with hydrogen and a catalyst to give ethylene then add water in the presence of an acid catlayst to get alcohol.

Practically speaking, you would do better to roast the carbonate to CO2, grow sugar cane in the CO2 produced and ferment it to alcohol.

 

(and, Darkblade48, where's your sense of adventure?)