[5] Like other long-chain primary alcohols, it is used as an ingredient in industrial chemicals, lubricating oils, and consumer products such as lotions and creams.

[7] In their product literature, Shell claims that high-chain primary alcohols (in the C9–C17 range) are "readily biodegradable and unlikely to bioaccumulate".

[3][7] They are not corrosive to carbon steel storage containers or process equipment, and are compatible with a variety of polymers; Shell recommends tetrafluoroethylene, high-density polyethylene, polypropylene and butyl rubber as gasketing materials.

[9] The alcohol was discovered in 1893 by Angelo Simonini, a student of Adolf Lieben at the University of Vienna, who used a variation of what's known as Hunsdiecker reaction (often called Simonini reaction) to get pentadecyl palmitate from silver palmitate and iodine at 100°C:[10] 2 C15H31COOAg + I2 → C15H31COOC15H31 + CO2 + 2 AgI The Shell corporation uses a proprietary process for the synthesis of 1-pentadecanol (referring to it by the trade name Neodol 5) via hydroformylation of olefins produced from ethylene.

[6] Small amounts of 1-pentadecanol have been found (using thin-layer chromatography and GC/MS) to naturally occur in the leaves of Solena amplexicaulis (creeping cucumber).

The specificity of the cells' microsomal alkyl DHAP synthase with respect to different alcohols was investigated; pentadecanol had an activity of approximately 0.2 mol/min/mg protein.

The study computationally evaluated Gibbs free energy (∆G) for the molecular docking of alcohols C1 (methanol) to C15 (pentadecanol) as ligands of the InhA, MabA, and PanK receptors.

The observed trend was that binding energy between ligand and receptor increased with chain length; pentadecanol, the longest alcohol tested, had a ∆G computationally estimated as −4.9 kcal/mol with InhA, −4.9 kcal/mol with MabA, and −5.5 kcal/mol with PanK.