Hydroquinone
chemical compound
Hydroquinone, also known as benzene-1,4-diol or quinol, is an aromatic organic compound that is a type of phenol, a derivative of benzene, having the chemical formula C6H4(OH)2. It has two hydroxyl groups bonded to a benzene ring in a para position. It is a white granular solid. Substituted derivatives of this parent compound are also referred to as hydroquinones. The name "hydroquinone" was coined by Friedrich Wöhler in 1843.
In 2023, it was the 274th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 800,000 prescriptions.
Production
Hydroquinone is produced industrially in two main ways.
The most widely used route is similar to the cumene process in reaction mechanism and involves the dialkylation of benzene with propene to give 1,4-diisopropylbenzene. This compound reacts with air to afford the bis(hydroperoxide), which is structurally similar to cumene hydroperoxide and rearranges in acid to give acetone and hydroquinone.
A second route involves hydroxylation of phenol over a catalyst.
“Hydroquinone” enters the record as chemical compound. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hydroquinone, chemical and compound can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Hydroquinone” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Hydroquinone, chemical and compound provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q419164. The Library of Congress control number is sh85063488. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1843 and 2023.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hydroquinone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.