Hemiacetals

thumb|The general structure of a hemiacetal (left) and hemiketal (right). In organic chemistry, a hemiacetal is a functional group with the general formula , where is a hydrogen atom or an organic substituent. They generally result from the nucleophilic addition of an alcohol (a compound with at least one hydroxy group) to an aldehyde () or a ketone () under acidic conditions. The addition of an alcohol to a ketone is more commonly referred to as a hemiketal. Common examples of hemiacetals include cyclic monosaccharides. Hemiacetals have use as a protecting group and in synthesizing oxygenated

Paraformaldehyde (PFA) is the smallest polyoxymethylene, the polymerization product of formaldehyde with a typical degree of polymerization of 8–100 units. Paraformaldehyde commonly has a slight odor of formaldehyde due to decomposition. Paraformaldehyde is a poly-acetal.