Butanediol

---

title: "Butanediol" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["alkanediols"] topic_path: "general/alkanediols" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butanediol" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

Butanediol, also called butylene glycol, may refer to any one of four stable structural isomers:

• 1,2-Butanediol
• 1,3-Butanediol
• 1,4-Butanediol
• 2,3-Butanediol

Geminal diols

There are also two geminal diols (gem-diols), which are less stable:

• 1,1-Butanediol, hydrate of butanal
• 2,2-Butanediol, hydrate of butanone

Isobutylene glycol and methylpropanediol

Isobutylene glycol may be considered a kind of butylene glycol, similarly to butane historically including n-butane and i-butane (isobutane). The modern name for the closely related type of compounds is methylpropanediol. There are two stable structural isomers:

• 2-methylpropane-1,2-diol
• 2-methylpropane-1,3-diol and one unstable geminal diol:
• 2-methylpropane-1,1-diol (not a glycol), hydrate of 2-methylpropanal (isobutyraldehyde) These three methylpropanediols are structural isomers of butanediols. They are not chiral.

Examples

2-Methylpropane-1,3-diol derivatives:

• Crisnatol, an experimental medication
• 2-Methyl-2-propyl-1,3-propanediol, medication precursor and active metabolite

References

References

1. "Butanediol". PubChem.
2. "Propanediol, methyl-". PubChem.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::