Is acrolein test a general test for fats?explain with the aid of structural formula of acrolein.?

Acrolein test is a test for the presence of glycerin or fats. A sample is heated with potassium bisulfate, and acrolein is released if the test is positive.[5] When a fat is heated strongly in the presence of a dehydrating agent such as KHSO4, the glycerol portion of the molecule is dehydrated to form the unsaturated aldehyde, acrolein (CH2=CH-CHO), which has the peculiar odor of burnt grease.


The primary function of chemical nomenclature is to ensure that the person who hears or reads a chemical name is under no ambiguity as to which chemical compound it refers: each name should refer to a single substance. It is considered less important to ensure that each substance should have a single name, although the number of acceptable names is limited.

It is also preferable that the name convey some information about the structure or chemistry of a compound. CAS numbers form an extreme example of names which do not perform this function: each refers to a single compound but none contain information about the structure. One might be tempted to add [7647-14-5] to one's meal, but not [133-43-9]鈥攖he former is sodium chloride, the latter sodium cyanide.

The form of nomenclature which should be used depends on the public to which it is addressed: as such there is no single correct form, but rather different forms which are more or less appropriate in different circumstances.

A common name will often suffice to identify a chemical compound in a particular set of circumstances. There is little risk that the "salt" on a dinner table will be sodium cyanide (technically a salt itself)! To be more generally applicable, the name should indicate at least the chemical formula: hence table salt is referred to chemically as sodium chloride, which indicates by the rules of inorganic nomenclature that the formula is NaCl. To be more specific still, the three-dimensional arrangement of the atoms may need to be specified: there are occasions where it might be necessary to distinguish between sodium chloride (halite structure) (the common form) and sodium chloride (CsCl structure) (of theoretical interest only). In a few specific circumstances (such as the construction of large indices), it becomes necessary to ensure that each compound has a unique name: this requires the addition of extra rules to the standard IUPAC system (the CAS system is the most commonly used in this context), at the expense of having names which are longer and less familiar to most readers. Other system gaining popularity is International Chemical Identifier - InChI - while InChI symbols are not human readable they contain complete information about substance structure. That makes them more general than CAS numbers.

The IUPAC system is often criticized for these above failures when they become relevant (for example in differing reactivity of sulfur allotropes which IUPAC doesn't distinguish). While IUPAC has a human-readable advantage over CAS numbering, it would be difficult to claim that the IUPAC names for some larger, relevant molecules (such as rapamycin) are human-readable, and so most researchers simply use the informal names.