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Answer» What is Oxalic Acid mean? Oxalic acid is an organic acid with the IUPAC name ethanedioic acid and formula HO
2C−CO
2H. It is the simplest dicarboxylic acid. It is a white crystalline solid that forms a colorless solution in water. Its name comes from the fact that early investigators isolated oxalic acid from flowering plants of the genus Oxalis, commonly known as wood-sorrels. It occurs naturally in many foods, but excessive ingestion of oxalic acid or prolonged skin contact can be dangerous. Oxalic acid has much greater acid strength than acetic acid. It is a reducing agent and its conjugate base, known as oxalate (C
2O2−
4), is a chelating agent for metal cations. Typically, oxalic acid occurs as the dihydrate with the formula C
2H
2O
4·2H2O. reference
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