Aromatic Hydrocarbons

These hydrocarbons are also known as ‘arenes’. Since most of them possess pleasant odour (Greek; aroma meaning pleasant smelling), the class of compounds was named as ‘aromatic compounds’. Most of such compounds were found to contain benzene ring.

Benzene ring is highly unsaturated but in a majority of reactions of aromatic compounds, the unsaturation of benzene ring is retained. However, there are examples of aromatic hydrocarbons which do not contain a benzene ring but instead contain other highly unsaturated ring.

Aromatic compounds containing benzene ring are known as benzenoids and those not containing a benzene ring are known as non-benzenoids.

Examples: