Development and commercialization

These disadvantages prompted Ernest Solvay (1838—1922) to develop and commercialize a procedure using ammonia to produce soda ash from salt and limestone. The first plant using the Solvay process was built in 1863 this process or variations are in use in much of the world in the 1990s. 

The earliest large-scale continuous industrial extraction equipment consisted of mixer—settlers and open-spray columns. The vertical stacking of a series of mixer—settlers was a feature of a patented column in 1935 (96) in which countercurrent flow occurred because of density difference between the phases, avoiding the necessity for interstage pumping. This was a precursor of the agitated column contactors which have been developed and commercialized since the late 1940s. There are several texts (1,2,6,97—98) and reviews (99—100) available that describe the various types of extractors. 

Potassium Amides. The strong, extremely soluble, stable, and nonnucleophilic potassium amide base (42), potassium hexamethyldisilazane [40949-94-8] (KHMDS), KN [Si(CH2]2, pX = 28, has been developed and commercialized. KHMDS, ideal for regio/stereospecific deprotonation and enolization reactions for less acidic compounds, is available in both THF and toluene solutions. It has demonstrated benefits for reactions involving kinetic enolates (43), alkylation and acylation (44), Wittig reaction (45), epoxidation (46), Ireland-Claison rearrangement (47,48), isomerization (49,50), Darzen reaction (51), Dieckmann condensation (52), cyclization (53), chain and ring expansion (54,55), and elimination (56). 

Most commercial processes produce polypropylene by a Hquid-phase slurry process. Hexane or heptane are the most commonly used diluents. However, there are a few examples in which Hquid propylene is used as the diluent. The leading companies involved in propylene processes are Amoco Chemicals (Standard OH, Indiana), El Paso (formerly Dart Industries), Exxon Chemical, Hercules, Hoechst, ICl, Mitsubishi Chemical Industries, Mitsubishi Petrochemical, Mitsui Petrochemical, Mitsui Toatsu, Montedison, Phillips Petroleum, SheU, Solvay, and Sumimoto Chemical. Eastman Kodak has developed and commercialized a Hquid-phase solution process. BASE has developed and commercialized a gas-phase process, and Amoco has developed a vapor-phase polymerization process that has been in commercial operation since early 1980. 

Ethylene oxide (qv) was once produced by the chlorohydrin process, but this process was slowly abandoned starting in 1937 when Union Carbide Corp. developed and commercialized the silver-catalyzed air oxidation of ethylene process patented in 1931 (67). Union Carbide Corp. is stiU. the world s largest ethylene oxide producer, but most other manufacturers Hcense either the Shell or Scientific Design process. Shell has the dominant patent position in ethylene oxide catalysts, which is the result of the development of highly effective methods of silver deposition on alumina (29), and the discovery of the importance of estabUshing precise parts per million levels of the higher alkaU metal elements on the catalyst surface (68). The most recent patents describe the addition of trace amounts of rhenium and various Group (VI) elements (69). 

Numerous technologies have been developed with varying degrees of success to maximize the various benefits of controlled release. Heightened attention to environmental concerns has prompted increased activities worldwide in the development and commercialization of controlled release fertilizers. 

The direct electrochemical oxidation of manganese alloys was developed and commercialized at the Rustavi Chemical Combine in the Georgian Repubhc (formerly the USSR). The electrode reactions are... 

Numerous AFM imaging techniques have been developed and commercialized to monitor topography, friction, mechanical response, capacitance, magnetic properties, etc. However, adhesion measurements require the tip to come into, and out of, contact to measure attractive and adhesion forces. Therefore, other than to select an analysis region, most imaging techniques are not useful for adhesion studies. Instead, measurements are necessarily based on force-displacement curve approaches. 

The Institut Fran ais du Petrole has developed and commercialized a process, named Dimersol X, based on a homogeneous catalyst, which selectively produces dimers from butenes. The low-branching octenes produced are good starting materials for isononanol production. This process is catalyzed by a system based on a nickel(II) salt, soluble in a paraffinic hydrocarbon, activated with an alkylalumini-um chloride derivative directly inside the dimerization reactor. The reaction is sec-... 

Many of the world s major automakers, prompted by both this consumer demand and progress in reducing the inherent cost and size of fuel cells, are now committed to developing and commercializing fuel cell vehicles. 

Of course, not all the phosphazene polymers that have been synthesized are equally important. Many of them, in fact, have a mere academic or speculative interest, and will not be described in this article. A few other classes of POPs, however, do occupy an important place in phosphazene history, and have been seriously considered for industrial development and commercialization. These polymers are basically those in which the properties of the inorganic -P=N- skeleton overlap to the highest extent those of the phosphorus side substituents. In the successive sections of this article we will describe in some detail the most important classes of polyphosphazenes that fulfil this condition. 

Laboratory notebooks—It may be debatable to consider laboratory notebooks as text documents, but they should be mentioned here because of their importance in preclinical development. Laboratory notebooks are used to record experimental procedures, observations, raw data, and other important information. Although laboratory notebooks are rarely used for submission to regulatory agencies directly, they are available for inspection by the authorities in the Preapproval Inspection (PAI) and other GMP/GLP-related inspections. Currently, most of the major pharmaceutical companies still use paper-based laboratory notebooks. Electronic-based notebook systems are being developed and commercialized, which are discussed in Chapter 9. 

New materials are also finding application in the area of catalysis reiated to the Chemicals industry. For example, microporous [10] materials which have titanium incorporated into the framework structure (e.g. so-calied TS-1) show selective oxidation behaviour with aqueous hydrogen peroxide as oxidizing agent (Figure 5). Two processes based on these new catalytic materials have now been developed and commercialized by ENl. These include the selective oxidation of phenol to catechol and hydroquinone and the ammoxidation of cyclohexanone to e-caproiactam. 

I define advanced-performance materials, development, and commercialization for the purposes of this chapter as follows ... 

The number of such examples, however, is not high. In many other examples of advanced-performance materials, such as DuPont s Kevlar and Allied Signal s SPECTRA, the volume applications associated with system-for-system substitution has not yet occurred at a level necessary to pay back the development and commercialization costs already expended. High-performance ceramics is another area in which the early promise has yet to materialize. The consequences of Eckstut s life-cycle dynamics have been overcapacity and severe rationalization in high-performance carbon fiber businesses, some specialty alloy activities, and high-performance polymer composites. Thus, with critical technologies that involve advanced-performance materials, we need to better understand how to exploit their value in a commercially viable way. 

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