Carbide process

Iron carbide process Iron-carbon alloys Iron castings... 

The first process for manufacture of calcium carbide [75-20-7] and acetylene [74-86-2] involved the reaction of coke and lime. The carbide process operates at a temperature of about 2000°C according to the following reaction ... 

An example of a commercial semibatch polymerization process is the early Union Carbide process for Dynel, one of the first flame-retardant modacryhc fibers (23,24). Dynel, a staple fiber that was wet spun from acetone, was introduced in 1951. The polymer is made up of 40% acrylonitrile and 60% vinyl chloride. The reactivity ratios for this monomer pair are 3.7 and 0.074 for acrylonitrile and vinyl chloride in solution at 60°C. Thus acrylonitrile is much more reactive than vinyl chloride in this copolymerization. In addition, vinyl chloride is a strong chain-transfer agent. To make the Dynel composition of 60% vinyl chloride, the monomer composition must be maintained at 82% vinyl chloride. Since acrylonitrile is consumed much more rapidly than vinyl chloride, if no control is exercised over the monomer composition, the acrylonitrile content of the monomer decreases to approximately 1% after only 25% conversion. The low acrylonitrile content of the monomer required for this process introduces yet another problem. That is, with an acrylonitrile weight fraction of only 0.18 in the unreacted monomer mixture, the low concentration of acrylonitrile becomes a rate-limiting reaction step. Therefore, the overall rate of chain growth is low and under normal conditions, with chain transfer and radical recombination, the molecular weight of the polymer is very low. 

Although acetylene production in Japan and Eastern Europe is stiU based on the calcium carbide process, the large producers in the United States and Western Europe now rely on hydrocarbons as the feedstock. Now more than 80% of the acetylene produced in the United States and Western Europe is derived from hydrocarbons, mainly natural gas or as a coproduct in the production of ethylene. In Russia about 40% of the acetylene produced is from natural gas. 

Acetylene traditionally has been made from coal (coke) via the calcium carbide process. However, laboratory and bench-scale experiments have demonstrated the technical feasibiUty of producing the acetylene by the direct pyrolysis of coal. Researchers in Great Britain (24,28), India (25), and Japan (27) reported appreciable yields of acetylene from the pyrolysis of coal in a hydrogen-enhanced argon plasma. In subsequent work (29), it was shown that the yields could be dramatically increased through the use of a pure hydrogen plasma. 

The iron carbide process is alow temperature, gas-based, fluidized-bed process. Sized iron oxide fines (0.1—1.0 mm) are preheated in cyclones or a rotary kiln to 500°C and reduced to iron carbide in a single-stage, fluidized-bed reactor system at about 590°C in a process gas consisting primarily of methane, hydrogen, and some carbon monoxide. Reduction time is up to 18 hours owing to the low reduction temperature and slow rate of carburization. The product has the consistency of sand, is very britde, and contains approximately 6% carbon, mostly in the form of Ee C. 

The menstmum niobium—carbide process (7) utilizes either columbite [1310-23-2] mineral concentrates or ferroniobium as starting materials. A low level of TaC in soHd solution with NbC commonly occurs, as Ta and Nb occur together in ores. The properties of NbC are given in Table 1. The grayish brown NbC powder is used in cemented carbides to replace TaC. TaC—NbC soHd solutions that have 3 1, 2 1, 1 1, and 1 2 ratios and the corresponding ternary and quaternary soHd solutions with TiC and WC are common. 

In the low-pressure systems a shot of material is injected into the mould which, if it did not expand, would give a short shot. However, the expanding gas causes the polymer to fill the mould cavity. One important form of the low-pressure process is the Union Carbide process in which the polymer is fed to and melted in an extruder. It is blended with nitrogen which is fed directly into the extruder. The extruder then feeds the polymer melt into an accumulator which holds it under pressure (14-35 MPa) to prevent premature expansion until a predetermined shot builds up. When this has been obtained a valve opens and the accumulator plunger rams the melt into the mould. At this point the mould is only partially filled but the pressurised gas within the melt allows it to expand. 

Linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) is produced in the gas phase under low pressure. Catalysts used are either Ziegler type or new generation metallocenes. The Union Carbide process used to produce HDPE could be used to produce the two polymer grades. Terminal olefins (C4-C6) are the usual comonomers to effect branching. 

Union Carbide Patents. During World War II, Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation patented a process (24) having some features in common with the German process described above. The Union Carbide process as patented is illustrated in Figure 15. The continuous process consists essentially of two reaction zones followed by a milling-pumping zone. 

In 1951 Robert Banks and Paul Hogan of Phillips Petroleum discovered that ethylene could be polymerized under rather mild conditions of temperature and pressure to afford high molecular weight polyethylene using chromium trioxide as the catalyst. This invention laid the foundation for both the Phillips and Union Carbide processes for ethylene polymerization (both use heterogeneous chromium catalysts). 

Table 10.2 Some Operating Conditions for the Union Carbide Process... 

Advances in silicon carbide processing and applications.—(Artech House semiconductor materials and devices library). 

Figure 5 Flow diagram of the Union Carbide Process for hydroformylation of higher olefins catalysed by Rhltppms in a single phase with biphasic catalyst separation.

Trichlorosilane can be dismutated in the presence of basic catalysts into SiCLt and SiH2Cl2, SiH3Cl and SihLt. This is the basis of the Union Carbide process to produce pure silicon via SibLj. 

The linearity of the aldehyde product increases with the concentration of triphenyl phosphine. This is being exploited in the Union Carbide process for the hydroformylation of propene in which linearities >90% are obtained. The rate, however, drops to lower values and the most likely explanation for the higher linearities in this system would seem to be the steric congestion around the rhodium atom at high phosphine concentrations, which kinetically and thermodynamically favours the formation of linear alkyl rhodium complexes relative to branched alkyl rhodium complexes. Product linearity decreases with the number of triphenyl phosphines present in the series of precursor complexes ... 

Figure 6 Union-Carbide process, a) catalyst hopper b) fluidized-bed reactor c) cyclone ...

Ethylbenzene separation by distillation. Union Carbide process. 

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