Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Esterfication of acids with multiple acidic groups

budullewraagh - 24-8-2004 at 06:14

how does one name esters of organic acids that have multiple acidic functional groups (ex citric acid)? what would it be called with say, 1 of those groups "esterfied"? what about two? what about all three?

unionised - 27-8-2004 at 12:33

Well, I'm not sure but...
There is certainly a chemical called triethyl citrate. There must be two different diethyl citrates and two monoethyl citrates.
I presume that the diesters would be called 1,3 diethyl citrate and 1,5 diethy citrate and that the mono esters would be 1 ethyl and 3 ethyl citrate.
There is still the question of things like 1-ethyl, 3-propyl 5-butyl citrate whch would exist in R and S forms.
At least, that's my best guess, has anyone else got any ideas?

JohnWW - 27-8-2004 at 14:58

That's right. The original poster needs to look up some info on Google on the subject of "chemical nomenclature".

John W.

unionised - 30-8-2004 at 08:34

Not any more, he doesn't.:)

The rules for IUPAC organic nomenclature are given in the CRC handbook. They run to about 40 pages and are rather daunting to the uninitiated.