Oxalic acid is an odorless, colorless powder or granular solid. It is used as a scouring agent in textiles for finishing, stripping, cleaning, and as a bleaching agent for stain removal. Oxalic acid is also used as a rust remover as well as a grease and wax removing agent in metal cleaning. It is also used to clean and sterilize equipment, slso as a purifying agent in the pharmaceutical industry, in the waste water treatment industry and is also used to remove calcium from water. Oxalic acid is found in many plants and in many vegetables, for example sorrel, spinach and rhubarb, usually as its calcium or potassium salts. Oxalic acid is produced commercially by nitric acid oxidation of starch. It also can be made by fusing sawdust (or other forms of cellulose) with a mixture of sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide. Oxalic acid may be released to the environment in tobacco smoke, automobile exhaust, rendering, in waste streams from pulp bleaching, and by photochemical oxidations of anthropogenic compounds during long range transport.
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Obtained courtesy of the Cambridge Structural Database
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