Material guide · 101
Material guide: Floralozone, the forum says ozonic and the database's controlled term is marine
· 13 min read
CAS 67634-14-4, 31 suppliers. The database calls it ozone propanal, with floralozone (IFF) as its first synonym. Its odour type is marine while the first word in its odour field is ozone. That gap is itself worth recording: ozonic does not exist among the 169 controlled odour types, and the marine slot is where it lives. Strength reads medium, evaluated at 10 percent or less, substantivity 80 hours, not found in nature. The notes field is four words: gives good body.
In short: one of the better-supplied materials in the "clean air" slot. What to know before buying is that the database files it under marine rather than ozone, because the latter is not in the controlled vocabulary.
Fields
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| CAS | 67634-14-4 |
| EINECS | 266-818-7 |
| First synonym | floralozone (IFF) |
| Formula | C13H18O, MW 190.286 |
| Database category | fragrance agents |
| Appearance | colorless clear liquid (est) |
| Assay | 94.00 to 100.00 sum of isomers |
| Boiling point | 267.6 C @ 760 mmHg (est) |
| Flash point | > 100 C |
| logP | 3.30 (est) |
| Vapour pressure | 0.008 mmHg @ 25 C (est) |
| Specific gravity | 0.950-0.958 @ 25 C |
| Refractive index | 1.504-1.509 @ 20 C |
| Water solubility | 21.05 mg/L @ 25 C (est) |
| Solubility | alcohol; alcoholic lotion; antiperspirant; deo stick; fabric softener; hard surface cleaner; shampoo; soap |
| Odour type | marine |
| Odour | ozone; clean; fresh; green; marine |
| Strength | medium, evaluate at 10% or less (rank 2) |
| Substantivity | 80 hours (neat) |
| Shelf life | 24 months |
| Occurrence | not found in nature |
| Suppliers | 31 |
| Cosmetic uses | perfuming agents |
| Oral toxicity | rat LDLo 5000 mg/kg |
| Dermal toxicity | rabbit LD50 > 5000 mg/kg |
| Note | Gives good body |
The odour type and the odour field use different words
The first reason this record is worth writing up on its own is that two of its fields disagree on wording.
- Odour type:
marine - First word in the odour field:
ozone
The database's odor_type is a controlled vocabulary with 169 values across the library. Scanning it, neither ozone nor ozonic is in there.
What is in there: marine (11), ocean (2), seaweed (2), rain (2), fresh (6), clean (6).
Forums say ozonic; searching by odour type requires marine. Nobody tells you about the conversion.
(Why the vocabulary drops a whole category of words is measured in What is the material that smells fuzzy, static-y, warm. Texture and sensation words appear in the hundreds in the free-text field and almost nowhere in the controlled one.)
The assay field says "sum of isomers"
94.00 to 100.00 sum of isomers.
Those three words have come up before: the spec governs the total of the isomers, not the proportion of any one of them.
The synonyms field agrees, carrying ortho- and para-, 3-(o- and p-, o- and p-. This material is itself a mixture of ortho and para isomers.
So the ratio may differ between lots, and the specification does not govern that. (The same structure appears in the rose oxide article, where it was a cis:trans ratio.)
"Ozone" is a metaphor
The first word in the odour field is ozone, and the occurrence field says not found in nature.
Ozone itself is O3 and has nothing to do with this C13H18O aldehyde. The word here refers to how the air feels after a thunderstorm, not to a molecule.
Ward and colleagues did something adjacent in Heliyon in 2022: using an electronic nose to predict human crossmodal correspondences from physicochemical features. They found smoothness of texture (r = 0.82), angularity of shapes (0.71) and pitch (0.70) predictable from molecular properties, while perceived pleasantness was not (r = 0.20).
That paper did not measure an ozone quality. What it does establish, and it bears on this material, is that describing a smell with non-olfactory words is not vagueness; it is systematic.
80 hours of substantivity, strength medium
Eighty hours neat is mid-range in this library. The strength field is medium at rank 2, with evaluation recommended at 10% or less.
Its odour description field carries a line of supplier copy worth copying out:
"Powerful, clean, green, fresh air note reminiscent of ocean breezes. Gives lift to fragrances without dominating due to its neutral nature."
"Without dominating" is consistent with strength rank 2.
(That is also what the notes field's "gives good body" means: it is a structural material rather than a lead. I measured that role in the workhorse article.)
Where it is used
The solubility field lists a wide range: alcoholic lotion, antiperspirant, deo stick, fabric softener, hard surface cleaner, shampoo, soap.
Fabric softeners and cleaners appearing in that field usually indicate adequate stability in alkaline and oxidative environments. This material's commercial centre of gravity may not be on the fine fragrance side.
(I did not look up actual stability data in alkaline media; that is not a field in this database.)
What this doesn't establish
- I have not smelled it. This is database fields plus one paper.
- "Ozone is not in the controlled vocabulary" comes from scanning the 169
odor_typevalues. Records with an empty odour type do not enter that count. - I did not check whether the isomer ratio affects the odour. The assay field tells me only that the spec governs the total.
- Ward 2022 measured neither an ozone nor a marine quality. I cite it to show crossmodal description is systematic, not for any conclusion about this material.
- Vapour pressure, logP and water solubility are all estimates.
- The 80-hour substantivity was measured neat and is not comparable with records measured at 10% dilution.
- "Fabric softener means alkali-tolerant" is my inference; the database lists applications without stability data.
- I did not run corpus statistics. Its frequency in the 954-formula corpus is unchecked.