What Is Glycerin (or Glycerine or Glycerol)?
Glycerin, which is also known as Glycerine and Glycerol, is a thick syrupy liquid that is odourless and sweet tasting. It is based on a very short alkane molecule with three Carbon atoms. The name for this alkane is propane. If we are familiar with the rules for building alkane molecules, we can understand that the structure of propane is three carbon atoms joined by single bonds, with eight Hydrogen atoms attached to the outside of this Carbon skeleton. This structure is shown both with the electron pairs (left image) and the lines usually used to represent them (right image). What Is Glycerin: Structure Glycerin has three of the Hydrogen atoms replaced with alcohol functional groups, which consist of an oxygen and hydrogen molecule (-OH). These are also called hydroxy functional groups. These alcohol functional groups place glycerine in the alcohol group of chemicals, which explains its name of glycerol, the -ol on the end of the name denoting an alcohol of some kind. Its complete te
