Acetone can be transformed into isopropylamine as follows:[citation needed] Pure ammonium formate decomposes into formamide and water when heated, and this is its primary use in industry.

In the presence of Pd/C, ammonium formate decomposes to hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and ammonia.

This hydrogen gas is adsorbed onto the surface of the palladium metal, where it can react with various functional groups.

For example, alkenes can be reduced to alkanes, formaldehyde to methanol, and nitro compounds to amines.

Ammonium formate can be used for reductive amination of aldehydes and ketones (Leuckart reaction), by the following reaction:[5] Ammonium formate can be used as a mobile phase additive in high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and is suitable for use with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS).