Water, superheated

Frasch process A process for obtaining sulphur by passing superheated water down a shaft to liquefy sulphur which is blown to the surface with compressed air. 

Sulfur and Chlorine Pipelines. Underground sulfur is melted by superheated water and then piped as Hquid to the surface with compressed air. At the surface, molten sulfur is transported by heated pipeline to a storage or shipping terminal. One such pipeline, located under 15 m of water in the Gulf of Mexico, is insulated and surrounded by steel casing to which are strapped two 130-mm dia pipelines that carry return water from the deposit. The superheated water is carried from shore to the deposit in a 63.5-mm dia pipe inside the pipeline that carries the molten sulfur (21). 

In reeent years, tire use of elevated temperatures has been reeognised as a potential variable in method development. Witlr inereased temperature, aqueous-organie mobile phases separations ean improve, viseosity deereases and diffusion inereases so baek pressures are redueed. At higher temperatures (usually with superheated water > 100 °C under modest pressures) water alone ean be used as the mobile phase and eair provide unique separation opportunities. The absenee of an organie solvent enables the use in HPLC of alternative deteetors sueh as FID or on-line LC-NMR using deuterium oxide as the eluent. 

H, Frasch developed commercial recovery of S by superheated water process. 

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. ... 

Meluch et al.10 reported that high-pressure steam hydrolyzes flexible polyurethane foams rapidly at temperatures of 232-316°C. The diamines are distilled and extracted from the steam and the polyols are isolated from the hydrolysis residue. Good results were obtained by using reclaimed polyol in flexible-foam recipes at file 5% level. Mahoney et al.53 reported the reaction of polyurethane foams with superheated water at 200°C for 15 min to form toluene diamines and polypropylene oxide. Gerlock et al.54 studied the mechanism and kinetics of the reaction... 

Sulfur is widely distributed as sulfide ores, which include galena, PbS cinnabar, HgS iron pyrite, FeS, and sphalerite, ZnS (Fig. 15.11). Because these ores are so common, sulfur is a by-product of the extraction of a number of metals, especially copper. Sulfur is also found as deposits of the native element (called brimstone), which are formed by bacterial action on H,S. The low melting point of sulfur (115°C) is utilized in the Frasch process, in which superheated water is used to melt solid sulfur underground and compressed air pushes the resulting slurry to the surface. Sulfur is also commonly found in petroleum, and extracting it chemically has been made inexpensive and safe by the use of heterogeneous catalysts, particularly zeolites (see Section 13.14). One method used to remove sulfur in the form of H2S from petroleum and natural gas is the Claus process, in which some of the H2S is first oxidized to sulfur dioxide ... 

Frasch process A process for mining sulfur that uses superheated water to melt the sulfur and compressed air to force it to the surface, free energy See Gibbs free energy. free expansion Expansion against zero opposing pressure. 

Carbon dioxide and water are the most commonly used SCFs because they are cheap, nontoxic, nonflammable and environmentally benign. Carbon dioxide has a more accessible critical point (Table 6.13) than water and therefore requires less complex technical apparatus. Water is also a suitable solvent at temperatures below its critical temperature (superheated water). Other fluids used frequently under supercritical conditions are propane, ethane and ethylene. 

Water reaches supercritical conditions at 373.9 °C (Table 6.13) but it becomes a suitable solvent at 200-350 °C and at pressures generated solely by the expansion of the liquid medium, about 20-100 bar (subcritical or superheated water). 

CO2 extraction has been prevalent for the isolation of essential oils and other natural lipophilic pigments like carotenoids. Hot water and superheated water extraction methods are used for analytical preparation of polar pigments. The technique is commonly referred to as subcritical water extraction because the practitioners of this approach come from SEE backgrounds. 

Superheated water at 100°-240 °C, with its obvious benefits of low cost and low toxicity, was proposed as a solvent for reversed-phase chromatography.59 Hydrophobic compounds such as parabens, sulfonamides, and barbiturates were separated rapidly on poly(styrene-divinyl benzene) and graphitic phases. Elution of simple aromatic compounds with acetonitrile-water heated at 30°-130 °C was studied on coupled colums of zirconia coated with polybutadiene and carbon.60 The retention order on the polybutadiene phase is essentially uncorrelated to that on the carbon phase, so adjusting the temperature of one of the columns allows the resolution of critical pairs of... 

Miller and Hawthorne [416] have developed a chromatographic method that allows subcritical (hot/liquid) water to be used as a mobile phase for packed-column RPLC with solute detection by FID, UV or F also PHWE-LC-GC-FTD couplings are used. Before LC elution the extract is dried in a solid-phase trap to remove the water. In analogy to SFE-SFC, on-line coupled superheated water extraction-superheated water chromatography (SWE-SWC) has been proposed [417]. On-line sample extraction, clean-up and fractionation increases sensitivity, avoids contamination and minimises sources of error. 

Pt-catalyzed hydration of various aliphatic and aromatic alkynes under phase transfer conditions in (CH2C1)2/H20 in the presence of Aliquat 336 led to either a Markovnikov product, mixtures of two ketones, or ketones with the carbonyl group positioned away from the bulky side.72 In the absence of the phase transfer reagent, Aliquat 336, hardly any reaction took place. Recently, a hydrophobic, low-loading and alkylated polystyrene-supported sulfonic acid (LL-ALPS-SO3H) has also been developed for the hydration of terminal alkynes in pure water, leading to ketones as the product.73 Under microwave irradiation, the hydration of terminal arylalkynes was reported to proceed in superheated water (200°C) without any catalysts.74... 

Scheme 4.15 Hydration of terminal alkynes in superheated water.

The Baran group has reported an unusual deprotection of allyl esters in micro-wave-superheated water. A diallyl ester structurally related to the sceptrin natural products (see Scheme 6.87) was cleanly deprotected at 200 °C within 5 min (Scheme 6.168) [181]. Other standard deprotection transformations carried out under microwave conditions, specifically N-detosylations [317], trimethylsilyl (TMS) removal [318, 319], and N-tert-butoxycarbonyl (Boc) deprotection [231], are summarized in Scheme 6.169. 

A somewhat related approach was followed by Molteni and coworkers, who have described the three-component, one-pot synthesis of fused pyrazoles by reacting cyclic 1,3-diketones with DMFDMA and a suitable bidentate nucleophile, such as a hydrazine derivative (Scheme 6.195) [357]. Again, the reaction proceeds by initial formation of an enamino ketone as the key intermediate from the 1,3-diketone and DMFDMA precursors, followed by a tandem addition-elimination/cydodehydration step. The details of this reaction, carried out in superheated water as solvent, have been described in Section 4.3.3.1. 

Seawater is circulated below the sea bed where it is heated by volcanic activity before being re-injected into the sea at high pressure and temperature. The pressure prevents water from boiling until the temperature reaches 725 K. The superheated water dissolves minerals from around the vent that then precipitate as the water temperature cools. This gives the vents their black smoker appearance. Many small molecules such as H2, H2S and Mn2+ do not precipitate but remain in their reduced formed and are available as electron donors. 

Expanding the coal hydrogenation process to a small factory-size operation at this time forced Bergius to seek a larger and more economical source of hydrogen gas than he had obtained from the iron-superheated water reaction. (15)... 

Miyazaki, K., and Henry, R. E. (1978). Effects of system pressure on the bubble growth from superheated water droplets. In Topics in Two Phase Heat Transfer and Flow (S. G. Bankoff, ed.). Am. Soc. Mech. Eng., New York. 

An area of study related to this topic is the use of subcritical, but superheated water as a mobile phase for chromatographic separations [78], These separations use water heated to 100-220°C and pressures up to 50 bar, avoiding problems due to hydrolysis and oxidation, which is common when supercritical water is used. Although this is a new area of investigation, several reports on the hyphenation of HPLC using... 

---