Ester pyrolysis

Ester pyrolysis in organic chemistry is a vacuum pyrolysis reaction converting esters containing a β-hydrogen atom into the corresponding carboxylic acid and the alkene. The reaction is an E_i elimination and operates in a syn fashion.

Examples include the synthesis of acrylic acid from ethyl acrylate at 590 °C,^[1] the synthesis of 1,4-pentadiene from 1,5-pentanediol diacetate at 575 °C ^[2] or the construction of a cyclobutene framework at 700 °C ^[3]