Ethanethiol, commonly known as ethyl mercaptan, is an organosulfur compound with the formula CH3CH2SH. It is a colorless liquid with a distinct odor. Abbreviated EtSH, it consists of an ethyl group (Et), CH3CH2, attached to a thiol group, SH. Its structure parallels that of ethanol, but with sulfur in place of oxygen. The odor of EtSH is infamous. Ethanethiol is more volatile than ethanol due to a diminished ability to engage in hydrogen bonding. Ethanethiol is toxic in high concentrations. It occurs naturally as a minor component of petroleum, and may be added to otherwise odorless gaseous pr
Ethanethiol, commonly known as ethyl mercaptan, is an organosulfur compound with the formula CH3CH2SH. It is a colorless liquid with a distinct odor. Abbreviated EtSH, it consists of an ethyl group (Et), CH3CH2, attached to a thiol group, SH. Its structure parallels that of ethanol, but with sulfur in place of oxygen. The odor of EtSH is infamous. Ethanethiol is more volatile than ethanol due to a diminished ability to engage in hydrogen bonding. Ethanethiol is toxic in high concentrations. It occurs naturally as a minor component of petroleum, and may be added to otherwise odorless gaseous products such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to help warn of gas leaks. At these concentrations, ethanethiol is not harmful.
==Preparation== Ethanethiol is prepared by the reaction of ethylene with hydrogen sulfide in the presence of various catalysts. It is also prepared commercially by the reaction of ethanol with hydrogen sulfide gas over an acidic solid catalyst, such as alumina.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).