Formaldehyde is an industrially important chemical (world production 32 million tonnes in 2006) currently made from methanol using an iron molybdate catalyst. Reaction occurs at the surface of these particles, but surface sites are not represented by the bulk. Recent work, using molybdenum oxide support on iron oxide shows that the molydbdenum segregates at the surface and is present in the catalytically active phase. Optical spectroscopy of methanol adsorbed on these catalysts has given valuable information regarding the reaction mechanism. Unfortunately, under higher temperature conditions the catalysts become black and absorb light strongly, preventing this measurement being made. We aim to use inelastic neutron scattering to provide analogous vibrational speactra and characterise the reaction intermediates on these black samples.