In organic chemistry, 3-hydroxybutanal (acetaldol, aldol) is an organic compound with the formula and the structure . It is classified as an aldol () and the word "aldol" can refer specifically to 3-hydroxybutanal. It is formally the product of the dimerization of acetaldehyde (). A thick colorless or pale-yellow liquid, it is a versatile and valuable intermediate with diverse impacts. The compound is chiral although this aspect is not often exploited.
In organic chemistry, 3-hydroxybutanal (acetaldol, aldol) is an organic compound with the formula and the structure . It is classified as an aldol () and the word "aldol" can refer specifically to 3-hydroxybutanal. It is formally the product of the dimerization of acetaldehyde (). A thick colorless or pale-yellow liquid, it is a versatile and valuable intermediate with diverse impacts. The compound is chiral although this aspect is not often exploited.
==Production== Acetaldehyde dimerizes upon treatment with aqueous sodium hydroxide:
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).