31 Mar
2012
31 Mar
'12
1:39 p.m.
the carboxylic
acids. (I was wandering around wikipedia and
stumbled across mellitic acid. Fascinating compound.)
IIRC, that's a benzene
rign with a caboxylic acid group on each
carhon. If I am right, there's soemthing even stranger,
mellitic anhydride.
Wikipedia had a link to that, too. I didn't follow it.
It occurs to me that there's another potential way of constructing
anhydrides of mellitic acid: linking multiple molecules together by
dehydrating a pair of carboxyls on different rings. Carried to its
logical conclusion, this becomes a way of polymerizing mellitic acid.
I haven't thought enough about steric strain issues, but it would be
really neat to build a sheet of benzene rings linked together into a
triangular mesh with carboxyl-anhydride links.
[It] reacts violently with water, which is hardly
suprising.
Indeed. The above polymer, if it can be constructed, probably at least
as much so. (I suspect it quite possibly will decompose to ordinary
mellitic anhydride, perhaps even so much so that it is impossible to
prepare the polymer....) This begins to remind me of _Ignition_.
The oddity is that the formula for it is C_12 O_9 . In
other words,
carbon and oxygen only. Is this a legitimate oxide of carbon?
Probably about as much so as mellitic acid is an alcohol. :)
Wikipedia's mellitic anhydride page calls it one and has a list of many
other "exotic" C_nO_m compounds, such as carbon suboxide (C3O2).
On the other hand, an oxide of carbon that `burns' (reacts violently
and exothermically) with water is a somewhat disturbing concept.
If so, is it organic (oxides of carbon like CO and
CO_2 are normally
taken to be inorganic).
With a benzene ring in the middle of it? I would class it so, FWTMBW.
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