Peracetic acid Peracetic acid Peracetic acid (also known as peroxyacetic acid, or PAA), is an organic compound with the formula CHCOH. This organic peroxide is a colorless liquid with a characteristic acrid odor reminiscent of acetic acid. It can be highly corrosive. Peracetic acid is a weaker acid than the parent acetic acid, with a p"K" of 8.2. Peracetic acid is produced industrially by the autoxidation of acetaldehyde: It forms upon treatment of acetic acid with hydrogen peroxide with a strong acid catalyst: As an alternative, acetyl chloride and acetic anhydride can be used to generate a solution of the acid with
Chemical formula formulas. See IUPAC nomenclature of organic chemistry and IUPAC nomenclature of inorganic chemistry 2005 for examples. In addition, linear naming systems such as International Chemical Identifier (InChI) allow a computer to construct a structural formula, and simplified molecular-input line-entry system (SMILES) allows a more human-readable ASCII input. However, all these nomenclature systems go beyond the standards of chemical formulas, and technically are chemical naming systems, not formula systems. For polymers in condensed chemical formulas, parentheses are placed around the repeating unit. For example, a hydrocarbon molecule that is described as CH(CH)CH, is a molecule with fifty repeating units. If the