Copper industry, future developments

The Industrial Revolution was made possible by iron in the form of steel, an alloy used for construction and transportation. Other d-block metals, both as the elements and in compounds, are transforming our present. Copper, for instance, is an essential component of some superconductors. Vanadium and platinum are used in the development of catalysts to reduce pollution and in the continuing effort to make hydrogen the fuel of our future. 

Materials such as polypyrrole are exciting in terms of their future technological impact, not just because of the obvious applications of such a simple, cheap electrochromic but because it may be possible to develop them sufficiently to replace the more expensive, and often toxic, metallic conductors commonly employed in the electronics industry. This may not be such a distant dream since it has been calculated that the intrinsic conductivity of these materials, i.e. without the defects that are currently defeating attempts to increase their conductivity of c, < lOOOfl 1 cm", may be many times that of copper. 

An area of fewer than 1000 sq. miles in the Sudbury District of Ontario now entered the scene. Already in 1856 a Government Surveyor had reported the presence of ores there, but it was not until 1883, when the Canadian Pacific Railway was being extended westward from Sudbury, that the discovery assumed industrial importance. The first attraction was copper later the nickel content was noted and a nickel industry developed, which by 1905 succeeded in swamping that of New Caledonia. It is likely to maintain its foremost position long into the future as the area contains many millions of tons of ore. 

One important aspect that should be considered in future industrial processes to produce polyphenylene ethers is the use of greener solvents. In that context, some studies have been carried out to try to generate PPO in water [46]. Thus, Nishide and coworkers have developed a procedure where an aqueous solution of copper(II) complex (10mol%), that is, CUCI2/DTPA (DTPA = diethylenetriamine-A/ ,A/ ,A/ , A/ ",A/ "-pentaacetic acid), is mixed with an aqueous solution of DMP/NaOH 1/1, containing sodium w-dodecyl sulfate. 

The major fermentation method used to produce lactic acid on an industrial scale is the batch fermentation process. The factors affecting the batch process have been reviewed (Litchfield 1996 Vick Roy 1985). Because of the very corrosive properties of lactic acid, construction materials used for the fermenter and downstream processing equipment are a major cost item. Copper, copper alloys, steel, chrome steel, and high-nickel steels are all unsatisfactory. High-molybdenum stainless steel like SS316 is satisfactory. Plastic linings of fermentation tanks have been used successfiilly, and new developments in ceramics and plastics may provide future choices (Vick Roy 1985). 

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