R-COOH

Carboxylic acids can be prepared by the oxidation of an alcohol. For example, leave a bottle of wine in contact with the air or some other oxidizing agent, and the ethanol oxidizes to acetic acid  

This is something that really breaks my heart, especially if I paid a lot for that particular bottle. 

Formic acid, or methanoic acid, can be isolated by the distillation of ants. 

as in the critters that make mountainous sand piles in the cracks of the sidewalk in front of your house. The sting resulting from the bite of an ant is due to formic acid. That s why applying some base, such as baking soda. 

Many of these organic acids have a distinct odor associated with them. I m sure you re familiar with the odor of vinegar, or acetic acid, but other acids have distinct odors, such as those mentioned in Table 14-2. 

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Lithium aluminium hydride, LiAlH, is a very active reducing agent, and is used particularly for the ready reduction of carboxylic acids (or their esters) to primary alcohols R-COOH -> R CH,OH. 

Electrolysis, under similar conditions, of a mixture of two carboxylic acids RCOOH and R COOH leads, in addition to normal coupling products R—R and R —R, to cross coupling R—R. If a mixture of a saturated carboxylic acid and a half ester of an ato-dicarboxylic acid is electrolysed, there are three main products, viz., a hydrocarbon (I), a mono-ester (II), and a di-ester (HI) and these are readily separable by distillation. Some unsaturated ester (IV) is often present in small quantity. 

RCHO + R COOH + HIO3 RCOOH + R COOH + HIO3... 

Fig. 1. Typical naphthenic acid stmctures, where R = alkyl. For the acychc case z = 0 and the stmcture is simply R—COOH.

The zwitterion (6) can react with protic solvents to produce a variety of products. Reaction with water yields a transient hydroperoxy alcohol (10) that can dehydrate to a carboxyUc acid or spHt out H2O2 to form a carbonyl compound (aldehyde or ketone, R2CO). In alcohoHc media, the product is an isolable hydroperoxy ether (11) that can be hydrolyzed or reduced (with (CH O) or (CH2)2S) to a carbonyl compound. Reductive amination of (11) over Raney nickel produces amides and amines (64). Reaction of the zwitterion with a carboxyUc acid to form a hydroperoxy ester (12) is commercially important because it can be oxidized to other acids, RCOOH and R COOH. Reaction of zwitterion with HCN produces a-hydroxy nitriles that can be hydrolyzed to a-hydroxy carboxyUc acids. Carboxylates are obtained with H2O2/OH (65). The zwitterion can be reduced during the course of the reaction by tetracyanoethylene to produce its epoxide (66). 

HO—R—COOH, or an amino acid, H2N—R—COOH. In some cases, such monomers self-condense to a cycHc stmcture, which is what actually polymerizes. For example, S-caprolactam (1) can be thought of as the self-condensation product of an amino acid. Caprolactam undergoes a ring-opening polymerization to form another... 

Some of these compounds show antibacterial activity. Reduction gives 2-[(2-aminoethyl)amino]ethanols which react with organic acids to form amides that, on further heating, cyclize to imidazolines (6). For example, the diamine obtained by reducing (1) reacts with an organic acid (R"COOH) to give... 

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