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calcium oxide

File:Calcium-oxide-3D-vdW.png · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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calcium oxide

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Also known as caustic lime, quicklime, calx, calcium monoxide, limestone, burned lime, burnt lime, lime

chemical compound

AI overview

Calcium oxide is a chemical compound made from calcium and oxygen that is commonly produced by heating limestone at high temperatures. It has many practical uses in construction, water treatment, and industrial processes, making it an important material in modern manufacturing and infrastructure.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Chemical data

Formula
CaO
Molecular weight
56.08 g/mol
IUPAC name
oxocalcium
SMILES
O=[Ca]
InChIKey
ODINCKMPIJJUCX-UHFFFAOYSA-N
Polar surface area
17.1 Ų
H-bond donors
0
H-bond acceptors
1
Formal charge
0

via PubChem

Research

10,410 papers

via PubMed

~8 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Calcium oxide (formula: CaO), commonly known as quicklime or burnt lime, is a widely used chemical compound. It is a white, caustic, alkaline, crystalline solid at room temperature. The broadly used term lime connotes calcium-containing inorganic compounds, in which carbonates, oxides, and hydroxides of calcium, silicon, magnesium, aluminium, and iron predominate. By contrast, quicklime specifically applies to the single compound calcium oxide. Calcium oxide that survives processing without reacting in building products, such as cement, is called free lime.

Quicklime is relatively inexpensive. Both it and the chemical derivative calcium hydroxide (of which quicklime is the base anhydride) are important commodity chemicals.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “calcium oxide” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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