Natural Sources and Production

The most important natural source of titania is iron titanate, known as the mineral ibnenite. Titanium oxide occurs also in its pure form, as the mineral rutile. Titanium dioxide is produced industrially via the sulfate process, whereby Umenite (Fe Ii03) is hydrolyzed with sulfuric acid at 95 ° C, after which Ti02 is obtained by calcination at 800 °C. Rutile is purified by treatment with hydrochloric add gas and conversion into titanium tetrachloride Ti02 is produced by treating the TiCU with oxygen at 1000 °C. 

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In 1993, Furukawa et al. isolated mukoenine-A (55) from the root and stem bark of M. koenigii (82). One year later, Reisch et al. reported the isolation of the same natural product from the same natural source and named it girinimbilol (83). The UV spectrum [7max 217,238,260 (sh), 288,300,321 (sh), 333, and 356 nm] of mukoenine-A... 

The modern pharmaceutical industry began in Europe when researchers developed methods to isolate and determine the structure of complex chemicals from natural sources, and to build these compounds from inexpensive and readily available starting materials. Soon, industrial chemists were isolating many useful chemicals from coal tar, a by-product of the industrial use of coal for fuel, and developing methods to make many new products, including textile dyes, from scratch. 

Usually a biocatalyst-based process is in competition with other approaches, for instance enzyme resolution processes to produce single isomer products are in competition with their isolation from natural sources and chemical asymmetric synthesis processes. 

Chemists have a compelling curiosity to discover what compounds Nature provides, but to obtain this information it is necessary to isolate compounds from their natural source and to determine their structures. This is seldom an easy task, especially when the compound of interest is present at low concentrations such that enormous quantities of source material are required to extract even a few micrograms of the desired product. In this circumstance a high degree of skill and technology is required in both the isolation procedures and the subsequent investigations to establish the chemical structure. 

A disadvantage to measuring toluene exposure by hippuric acid is the production of this metabolite from natural sources, and the determination of toluylmercapturic acid is now favored as a biomarker of toluene exposure.10 An interesting sidelight is that dietary habits can cause uncertainties in the measurement of xenobiotic metabolites. An example of this is the measurement of worker exposure to 3-chloropropene by the production of allylmercapturic acid.11 This metabolite is also produced by garlic, and garlic consumption by workers was found to be a confounding factor in the method. Thiocyanate monitored as evidence of exposure to cyanide is increased markedly by the consumption of cooked cassava. 

Sodium sulfate is produced from natural sources and as byproduct in a variety of processes including ascorbic acid, battery recycling, resorcinol, silica pigment, viscose rayon, and sodium bichromate. Other salt cake production processes are based on the reaction of sulfuric acid (Mannheim process) or S02 and air (Hargreaves process) with sodium chloride. The Mannheim process is no longer in use in the United States. U.S. Hargreaves capacity is very limited. However, both processes are used widely in the rest of the world. 

Sodium Sulfate. Although considered a weak builder by some manufacturers, sodium sulfate (Na2S04) contributes little to detergent performance. It is commercially available from natural sources and as a byproduct from rayon processing. In dry mix and agglomerated type products, sodium sulfate is used to improve finished product flow characteristics. In spray-dried products, sodium sulfate acts as an inert filler and aids in density control. 

The details on the label not only clearly testify to the importance of showing the natural sources of products, but they also resonate with other cultural concerns about the healthful properties of natural food products. The full description on the label reads In the quiet secret corners of nature, located in the transparent lakes of the Valdai National Preserve, at depths of more than 130 meters, was born this unique, rich, satisfying mineral water Reserve. The water absorbs into itself all the cleanliness and primordialness [pervozdannosf] of the nature of this... 

To give examples of how translational research can result in pharmaceutical products from natural sources, and the emergence of biologies as therapeutic agents. 

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