Louisiana, sulfur

Mollarc. PD. From Calcasieu to Carainada A Brief History of the Louisiana Sulfur Industry, Chem. Eng. Progress, 73 (March 1989). 

A vat of sulfur in Port Sulphur, Louisiana. Sulfur is an important crop nutrient and is the thirteenth most abundant element in Earth s crust. 

In 1905, Union Sulfur produced more than 200,000 tonnes of sulfur from Calcasieu. Over six hundred people were employed at the mine. The Louisiana sulfur first arrived in the New York market in July 1905 and had displaced Sicilian imports by the fall. By 1907, 30 sulfur wells were active. The sulfur world was forever changed. Not only was there a new producer, this one mine was producing as much as a hundred mines in Sicily at a fraction of the cost. 

I had arranged for the sale of our sulfur in the various European countries, and knowing the production cost to my competitors, I succeeded very shortly in demonstrating that Louisiana sulfur was not a swindle, I found out afterwards that the lesson had cost the Anglo-Sicilian Company 285,000 pounds sterllng-but then we were friends, Their attitude changed greatly, and they decided to go out of business,... 

Although tetrafluorosilane can be readily produced by the action of hydrogen fluoride on sihca, its production is a by-product of HF production by the reaction of fluorospar and sulfuric acid and as a by-product from phosphate fertilizer production by the treatment of fluoroapatite with sulfuric acid (171). The most significant U.S. production is by IMC-Agrico at Uncle Sam, Louisiana. 

As of 1993—1994, over 70% of sulfuric acid production was not sold as such, but used captively to make other materials. At almost all large fertilizer plants, sulfuric acid is made on site, and by-product steam from these sulfur-burning plants is generally used for concentrating phosphoric acid ia evaporators. Most of the fertilizer plants are located ia Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, and North Carolina. In the production of phosphate fertilizers, the primary role of sulfuric acid is to convert phosphate rock to phosphoric acid and soHd calcium sulfates, which are removed by filtration. 

The ingenious process of melting suhlerranean sulfur with superheated water and forcing it to the surface with compressed air was devised and perfected by Herman Frasch in the period 1891-4. Oiiginally designed to overcome the problems of recovering sulfur from the caprock of salt domes far below the swamps and quicksands of Louisiana, the method is now also extensively used elsewhere To extract native sulfiu. ... 

Sulfur is a reactive, nonmetallic element naturally found in nature in a free or combined state. Large deposits of elemental sulfur are found in various parts of the world, with some of the largest being along the coastal plains of Louisiana. In its combined form, sulfur is naturally present in sulfide ores of metals such as iron, zinc, copper, and lead. It is also a constituent of natural gas and refinery gas streams in the form of hydrogen sulfide. Different processes have been developed for obtaining sulfur and sulfuric acid from these three sources. 

Atomic masses calculated in this manner, using data obtained with a mass spectrometer can in principle be precise to seven or eight significant figures. The accuracy of tabulated atomic masses is limited mostly by variations in natural abundances. Sulfur is an interesting case in point. It consists largely of two isotopes, fiS and fgS. The abundance of sulfur-34 varies from about 4.18% in sulfur deposits in Texas and Louisiana to 4.34% in volcanic sulfur from Italy. This leads to an uncertainty of 0.006 amu in the atomic mass of sulfur. 

Lamourelle, A. P. McKnight, J., and Nelson, D. E., Clean Fuels Route to Low Sulfur Low Aromatic Diesel, in NPRA Annual Meeting. 2001. New Orleans, Louisiana, March 18-20,. AM-01-28. 

Sulfur has been known since ancient times primarily because it is a rather common substance. It is the 15th most common element in the universe, and though it is not found in all regions of the Earth, there are signiflcant deposits in south Texas and Louisiana, as well in all volcanoes. Sulfur makes up about 1% of the Earth s crust. 

Sulfur is found in Sicily, Canada, Central Europe, and the Arabian oil states, as well as in the southern United States in Texas and Louisiana and offshore beneath the Gulf of Mexico. 

Another plant using dilute sulfuric acid for hydrolysis was built at Fullerton, Louisiana, in 1916 to produce daily 5,000 gallons of 188-proof alcohol. The Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin, assisted in the development and pilot plant work of both the Georgetown, and the Fullerton plants. The results of the work at these plants and in a Forest Products Laboratory pilot plant have been described by F. W. Kressman in U. S. Department of Agriculture Bulletin No. 983 (1922). This bulletin describes pilot plant investigations on the following variables ... 

Sulfur in Louisiana and Texas. Prospectors who were boring for petroleum in Louisiana in 1865 discovered a great sulfur deposit beneath a layer of quicksand five hundred feet thick (251). After several companies had failed in all attempts to exploit this sulfur, Herman Frasch in about 1890 began to study the problem. His method of attack is carefully recorded in his address of acceptance of the Perkin Medal in 1912. 

Elemental sulfur1-4 occurs naturally in association with volcanic vents and, in Texas and Louisiana, as underground deposits. The latter are mined by injecting air and superheated water, which melts the sulfur and carries it to the surface in the return flow (the Frasch process). Most of the sulfur used in industry, however, comes as a by-product of the desulfurization of fossil fuels. For example, Albertan sour natural gas, which often contains over 30% (90%, in some cases) hydrogen sulfide (H2S), as well as hydrocarbons (mainly methane) and small amounts of C02, carbonyl sulfide (COS), and water, is sweetened by scrubbing out the H2S and then converting it to elemental S in the Claus process.5 The Claus process is applicable in any industrial operation that produces H2S (see Section 8.5) it converts this highly toxic gas to nontoxic, relatively unreactive, and easily transportable solid sulfur. 

Ill - Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Texas. IV - Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming. V -Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.] The justification is that for the next decade at least oil and gas are likely to continue as the primary sources of domestic recovered sulfur. Second, the inclusion of Arizona and Nevada in PAD district V roughly corresponds with the present market for acid production from copper smelters. Third, as the districts are established on the basis of an aggregation of states, data compilation is simplified. And fourth, as the districts have been defined ja priori they were not based on present expository requirements. 

Sulfur is a very important industrial chemical. Current consumption ranks sulfur with the top five inorganic and organic chemicals produced in the U.S. The U.S. is the largest producer and consumer of sulfur in the world. The U.S. position in sulfur production resulted from the development of the Frasch process toward the end of the 19th century for mining the large sulfur deposits associated with salt domes in Texas and Louisiana. 

Until fairly recently, most sulfur came from the volcanic Italian island of Sicily. But today, America produces most of the world s sulfur. About a hundred years ago. big deposits were found in Louisiana, several hundred feet underground. The problem of getting it up was solved in 1894 in a very clever way by a young German emigrant, Herman Fraseh. He piped superheated water underground to melt the sulfur, then forced the melted sulfur to the top with compressed air. 

Low-Sulfur Crude Oil—Crude oil containing low concentrations of sulfur-beanng compounds, Crude is usually considered to be in tire low-sulfur category if it contains less than 0,5% (weight) sulfur. Examples of low-sulfur crudes are offshore Louisiana. Libyan, and Nigerian crudes,... 

Sulfur is found in large quantities but in various forms throughout the world. It is found in metal ores such as copper pyrites or chalcopyrite (CuFeS2) and zinc blende (ZnS) and in volcanic regions of the world. Natural gas and oil contain sulfur and its compounds, but the majority of this sulfur is removed as it would cause environmental problems. Sulfur obtained from these sources is known as recovered sulfur and it is an important source of the element. It is also found as elemental sulfur in sulfur beds in Poland, Russia and the US (Louisiana). These sulfur beds are typically 200 m below the ground. Sulfur from these beds is extracted using the Frasch process, named after its inventor Hermann Frasch. 

The occurrence of sulfur in the form of simple and complex sulfides of the heavy metals has already been discussed. Of greater consequence, however, are the vast underground deposits of nearly pure elemental sulfur found in the Gulf Coast areas of Louisiana and Texas. Less extensive and less pure deposits of elemental sulfur are also found in a number of other countries, principally Sicily, Spain, Chile, Mexico, and Japan. 

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