Question

Wood spirit was named ______

Answer 1

Wood spirit refers to a light volatile and flammable poisonous liquid alcohol. It is often employed as a solvent and used to make windshield wiper fluid, antifreeze, pesticides, paint thinner, fuel or denaturant for ethanol.

Complete step by step answer:
Wood spirit is also known as wood alcohol or methanol because it may be obtained as a by-product of the destructive wood distillation. Methanol is a light, colourless liquid at room temperature, and comprises less carbon but more hydrogen compared to any other liquid fuel. Destructive distillation refers to a chemical process which leads to the degradation of unprocessed material on heating. The step-wise procedure of wood distillation is explained below:
-Place your wood chips/flakes in to a pot
-Fill the pot with water
-Heat it to a temperature of $78.3^OC$
-Maintain this temperature for sometime
-The wood will start decomposition process
-A colourless liquid i.e. alcohol will be released into the condenser tube
-Slowly, this alcohol i.e. methanol will drip down into the container
-Distillation can be repeated to improve its purity

Hence, the correct answer is methanol i.e. Wood spirit was named methanol.

Note:
Destructive distillation of wood generally leads to the generation of many compounds like turpentine, tar, terpenes and methanol along with solid residue of charcoal. Nowadays, this destructive distillation process is not followed. Now, the hydrogenation process using carbon monoxide is mainly used by the industries to produce methanol.