Fluorine, elemental industrial preparation

New formulations are regularly commercialised. Studies on the action mechanism of 5-FU had a large influence on the development of other anti-tumour drugs derived from pyrimidine and purine. The 5-FU is industrially prepared at important tonnage by fluorination of uracil with elemental fluorine. 

The world s production of elemental fluorine amounted to around 1990 to 17 000 tons per year it is concentrated in North America, Europe, and Japan. This production is exclusively electrochemical, because F2 is the most highly oxidizing stable species known and so it cannot be industrially obtained by the action of another oxidant. To be exact there are chemical reactions, which produce elemental fluorine, like K NiFg + KF —> K3NiF6 + 1/2F2 (at 673 K, [44]). But then it has to be taken into account that elemental fluorine was needed to prepare the fluorine complex of Ni(IV). And the preparation method described in [45] is only of laboratory scale. 

There are also potentially important inorganic applications of COF. Most of the industrially important low-oxidation-state metal fluorides are prepared from the reaction of their oxides, hydroxides or carbonates with aqueous or anhydrous HF. However, preparation of fluorides of metals in high formal oxidation states is usually achieved by the use of elemental fluorine on the metal, because of the problem of hydrolysis from the reversible reaction of the oxide with HF ... 

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