Formamides are unique solvents that

Formamides are unique solvents that can dissolve wide variety chemicals including inorganic salts, polymers, natural products, and dyes because of their high dielectric constant and electron-donor characteristics [1], [2]. They are also being widely used as aprotic solvents for chemical reactions and as intermediates in various organic syntheses. For instance, N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) is one of the few solvents suitable for dissolving polyacrylonitrile. Formamides also find applications as extracting agents in several extraction processes such as the selective separations of acetylenes from olefins, butadiene from C4 raffinates, SO2 from CO2-containing gases, and aromatics from hydrocarbon mixtures [3], [4], [5], [6], [7].Formamides can be prepared by reacting methylformate, prepared separately from CO and methanol, with ammonia, primary amines or secondary amines as shown in Eqs. (1) and (2). The most striking feature of this process is that the reactions can be conducted in the absence of a catalyst and thus any additional process to remove catalyst is not required. One drawback is that the economic efficiency of the process is heavily dependent on the price of methylformate [8], [9].