What is the source of acetic acid?

Answer 1

It depends on what you want it for.

Acetic acid can be used in foods (in which case it's called vinegar), and to get food grade vinegar they put some sort of alcoholic beverage--wine, rice wine, hard cider, potato MASH, whatever--in a tank, add acetobacter bacteria and stir continuously while bubbling air through the mix. You get 15 percent acetic acid vinegar, which is reduced to 5 percent with water, in 24 hours.

If it's an industrial chemical, reacting methanol with carbon monoxide over a cobalt catalyst produces pure acetic acid as fast as you can feed stock into the reactor.

Answer 2

Acetic acid is primarily derived from the fermentation of sugars in fruits, grains, or other carbohydrates by acetic acid bacteria. It is also found in vinegar, which is the most common natural source of acetic acid. Additionally, acetic acid can be produced synthetically from methanol.