Acrolein
chemical compound
Acrolein (systematic name: propenal) is the simplest unsaturated aldehyde. It is a colorless liquid with a foul and acrid aroma. The smell of burnt fat (as when cooking oil is heated to its smoke point) is caused by glycerol in the burning fat breaking down into acrolein. It is produced industrially from propylene and mainly used as a biocide and a building block to other chemical compounds, such as the amino acid methionine.
History
Acrolein was first named and characterized as an aldehyde by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1839. He had been working with it as a thermal degradation product of glycerol, a material used in the manufacture of soap. The name is a contraction of 'acrid' (referring to its pungent smell) and 'oleum' (referring to its oil-like consistency). In the 20th century, acrolein became an important intermediate for the industrial production of acrylic acid and acrylic plastics.
Production
Acrolein is prepared industrially by oxidation of propene. The process uses air as the source of oxygen and requires metal oxides as heterogeneous catalysts:
About 500,000 tons of acrolein are produced in this way annually in North America, Europe, and Japan.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q342790. The Library of Congress control number is sh00009449. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1839.
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This entry incorporates text from “Acrolein” 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.