What Is Acrylic?

What Is Acrylic?

What is Acrylic Acid?

Acrylic acid is a valuable commodity. While you probably don’t use acrylic acid in your day-to-day life, it is used to produce many things that you do use on a daily basis. It can be used to form polymers that make up many of the plastics that you use every day, as well as paints and coatings.

Acrylic acid is a 3-carbon compound. One carbon is part of a carboxylic acid group, while the other two carbons are part of a double bond. It can form polymers using the double bond.

Acrylic Acid Synthesis

There are several ways that acrylic acid can be synthesized in the laboratory. The methods differ in the starting materials used as well as the reaction mechanisms.

One method starts out with ethene and adds carbon monoxide and water. The carbon in ethene and the carbon in carbon monoxide form a new carbon-carbon bond, the oxygen from water is added to the carbon, and we end up with acrylic acid:

A benefit of this method is that there are very few byproducts, and it uses up a common pollutant – carbon monoxide. But it requires a lot of energy to form a new carbon-carbon bond, making it very energy inefficient.