Wool wax hydrocarbons: A review

Abstract A review of the literature on wool wax hydrocarbons reveals that the hydrocarbons represent about 0.5% of wool wax and that they consist of a large number of normal and branched homologs. This, in turn, shows a structural similarity between the hydrocarbons and the wool wax acids or wool wax aliphatic alcohols: all three materials contain normal, iso and anteiso series. The wool wax hydrocarbons also contain highly branched alkanes as well as cycloalkanes.