Heats of formation of organic molecules by Ab Initio calculations: Carboxylic acids and esters

A bond and group equivalent scheme that allows the calculation of heats of formation for carboxylic acids and esters from ab initio 6-31G* energies has been developed. For a group of 16 compounds, the rms error for the calculated heats of formation was 0.64 kcal/mol. Heats of formation have been predicted for an additional seven compounds for which the experimental values are either unknown or suspect. © 1992 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.