Esterification of Ethanoic Acid
Esterification of Ethanoyl Chloride
What is an ester?
An ester is a molecule with an R-COO-R group in the middle of a hydrocarbon chain, more information on esters can be found in various parts of this website, the menu on the left hand side gives an overview of the websites content, feel free to use this to find out about the properties, structure and synthesis of esters. I have also listed some uses of esters which some of you may find interesting, if you know of any others that you feel should be listed my e-mail is listed on the menu to the left hand side
Nomenclature
To name an ester, first start with the name of the alcohol used (e.g. methanol) and change the "-anol" to "-yl" (e.g. methanol to methyl), then take the stem name of the carboxylic acid (e.g. Ethanoic acid) and change the "-oic acid" to "-oate" (e.g. ethanoic acid to ethanoate)
This means an ester formed from methanol and ethanoic acid would be named methyl ethanoate, and ethanol and butanoic acid would give ethyl butanoate etc etc
You may have noticed that sometimes you will just be given the structure of the ester, or an ester not formed from a carboxylic acid, this is no real problem though, as the alcohol is always the part of the chemical attached to the bridging oxygen, for example if the ester had the structure below it would be called methyl ethanoate, as the methyl group is attached to the oxygen, also notice the carbon double bonded to the oxygen is included in the naming of the other part of the molecule
Note: all organic reactants on this website are based on ethane, H3C-CH3, but they could just as easily be a different organic molecule. Also, this site assumes a basic knowledge of chemistry; if any terms confuse you or you don't understand a concept please don't hesitate to mail me.