Neutralisation of a carboxylic acid by a metal hydroxide
A carboxylic acid gives its acidic proton to hydroxide, forming water and a carboxylate salt.
What it needs, and what it gives
- Reaction class
- Acid–base neutralisation
- Aqueous solution at room temperature.
- balanced — the co-products are written out, not dropped
- Mechanism
- none written
How it is thought to happen
The transformation is applied and tested, but no canonical pathway has been written for it yet. Rather than generate a plausible-looking set of arrows, the platform offers nothing here. What it does claim — which bonds change — is read from the transformation itself and does not depend on a mechanism.
Try it on your own structures
Enter your reactants in the Reaction Lab. If this transformation matches what you drew, it is applied and the outcome is shown next to the records that back it — with the count of documented reactions doing the same thing on substrates like yours, rather than a confidence score.
Other acid–base neutralisation transformations
Neutralisation of a hydrohalic acid by a metal hydroxide
The acid gives its proton to the hydroxide ion. The proton and the hydroxide become water, and the remaining ions form a salt.
Neutralisation of an oxyacid by a metal hydroxide
An acid whose proton sits on an oxygen (such as nitric or sulfuric acid) transfers that proton to hydroxide, giving water and the corresponding salt. Polyprotic acids lose one proton per step.