World Wars

TABLE 1. Examples of chemicals used on a large scale in World War I as chemical agents. 

After WWn a number of countries continued to maintain active chemical weapons programmes. In particular the United States of America and the Soviet Union produced and maintained large stockpiles of modern chemical weapons containing the highly toxic nerve agents. Other countries, notably Iraq, have also developed and stockpiled chemical weapons. 

TABLE 2. Arsenic based chemical warfare agents 

Arsine SA Toxic gas known as Mithrite in France, developed but not used during WWII. 

Diphenylchloroarsine DA Vomiting agent developed and used in WWI, also stockpiled during WWn. 

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The next phase which resulted in the worldwide acceptance of eddy current technology for testing metals was the work of Dr Friedrich Foerster. Dr Foerster, a modem Giant, has rightly been called the father of modern eddy current testing (Ref 5). His early work was driven by the priorities of the Second World War, after which he embarked upon major research and... 

The history of semiconductor devices can be traced back to tire paper of Braun, published in 1874, describing rectifying behavior of a contact [1], However, for many years semiconductors were considered too difficult a subject and tire science of semiconductors began only during World War IT... 

Seitz F 1995 Research on silicon and germanium in World War II Phys. Today January, p 22... 

Titanium is not a rare element it is the most abundant transition metal after iron, and is widely distributed in the earth s surface, mainly as the dioxide TiOj and ilmenite FeTi03. It has become of commercial importance since World War II mainly because of its high strength-weight ratio (use in aircraft, especially supersonic), its... 

Until World War 11, there was no commercial production of elemental fluorine. The nuclear bomb project and nuclear energy applications, however, made it necessary to produce large quantities. 

I was born in Budapest, Hungary on May 22, 1927. My father, Gyula Olah, was a lawyer. My mother, Magda Krasznai, came from a family in the southern part of the country and fled to the capital, Bndapest, at the end of World War I, when it became part of Yugoslavia. 

At the end of World War 1, Hungary lost more than half of its former territory and population in the Versailles (Trianon) treaties. At the... 

Budapest between the two World Wars was a vibrant, cultnred city with excellent theaters, concert halls, opera house, and museums. The city consisted of ten districts. The working-class industrial outskirts of Pest had their row-houses, whereas the middle-class inner city had quite imposing apartment buildings. The upper classes and aristocracy lived in their villas in the hills of Buda. 

Zemplen was a strong-minded individualist who opposed any totalitarian system, from Nazism to Communism. He was briefly jailed toward the end of World War II by the Hungarian Fascists for refusing to join in the evacuation of the Technical University to Germany when the Russian armies advanced on Budapest. He was also strongly opposed to the Communists. 

Synthetic oil is feasible and can be produced from coal or natural gas via synthesis gas (a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen obtained from incomplete combustion of coal or natural gas). However, these are themselves nonrenewable resources. Coal conversion was used in Germany during World War II by hydrogenation or. 

A second international conference was held in 1911 but the intrusion of World War I prevented any substantive revisions of the Geneva rules The Inter national Union of Chemistry was established in 1930 and undertook the necessary revision leading to pub lication in 1930 of what came to be known as the Liege rules... 

After World War II the International Union of Chemistry became the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (known in the chemical com munity as the lUPAC) Since 1949 the lUPAC has is sued reports on chemical nomenclature on a regular basis The most recent lUPAC rules for organic chem istry were published in 1993 The lUPAC rules often offer several different ways to name a single com pound Thus although it is true that no two com... 

Poly(vinyl pyrrolidone). Another commercial polymer with significant usage is PVP (7). It was developed ia World War II as a plasma substitute for blood... 

Acetaldehyde, first used extensively during World War I as a starting material for making acetone [67-64-1] from acetic acid [64-19-7] is currendy an important intermediate in the production of acetic acid, acetic anhydride [108-24-7] ethyl acetate [141-78-6] peracetic acid [79-21 -0] pentaerythritol [115-77-5] chloral [302-17-0], glyoxal [107-22-2], aLkylamines, and pyridines. Commercial processes for acetaldehyde production include the oxidation or dehydrogenation of ethanol, the addition of water to acetylene, the partial oxidation of hydrocarbons, and the direct oxidation of ethylene [74-85-1]. In 1989, it was estimated that 28 companies having more than 98% of the wodd s 2.5 megaton per year plant capacity used the Wacker-Hoechst processes for the direct oxidation of ethylene. 

Until World War 1 acetone was manufactured commercially by the dry distillation of calcium acetate from lime and pyroligneous acid (wood distillate) (9). During the war processes for acetic acid from acetylene and by fermentation supplanted the pyroligneous acid (10). In turn these methods were displaced by the process developed for the bacterial fermentation of carbohydrates (cornstarch and molasses) to acetone and alcohols (11). At one time Pubhcker Industries, Commercial Solvents, and National Distillers had combined biofermentation capacity of 22,700 metric tons of acetone per year. Biofermentation became noncompetitive around 1960 because of the economics of scale of the isopropyl alcohol dehydrogenation and cumene hydroperoxide processes. 

Ma.nufa.cture. AU. manufacturers of butynediol use formaldehyde ethynylation processes. The earliest entrant was BASF, which, as successor to I. G. Farben, continued operations at Ludwigshafen, FRG, after World War II. Later BASF also set up a U.S. plant at Geismar, La. The first company to manufacture in the United States was GAF in 1956 at Calvert City, Ky., and later at Texas City, Tex., and Seadrift, Tex. The most recent U.S. manufacturer is Du Pont, which went on stream at La Porte, Tex., about 1969. Joint ventures of GAF and Hbls in Mad, Germany, and of Du Pont and Idemitsu in Chiba, Japan, are the newest producers. 

Ma.nufa.cture. Butyrolactone is manufactured by dehydrogenation of butanediol. The butyrolactone plant and process in Germany, as described after World War II (179), approximates the processes presendy used. The dehydrogenation was carried out with preheated butanediol vapor in a hydrogen carrier over a supported copper catalyst at 230—250°C. The yield of butyrolactone after purification by distillation was about 90%. 

A Vinyl-2-pyrrolidinone. l-Ethenyl-2-pyrrohdinone [88-12-0] C H NO, A/-vinylpyrrohdinone, was developed by Reppe s laboratory in Germany at the beginning of World War II and patented in 1940 (215). 

German vinyl ether plants were described in detail at the end of World War II and variations of these processes are stiU in use. Vinylation of alcohols from methyl to butyl was carried out under pressure typically 2—2.3 MPa (20—22 atm) and 160—165°C for methyl, and 0.4—0.5 MPa (4—5 atm) and 150—155°C for isobutyl. An unpacked tower, operating continuously, produced about 300 t/month, with yields of 90—95% (247). 

Ethylene Cyanohydrin Process. This process, the fkst for the manufacture of acryhc acid and esters, has been replaced by more economical ones. During World War I, the need for ethylene as an important raw material for the synthesis of ahphatic chemicals led to development of this process (16) in both Germany, in 1927, and the United States, in 1931. 

Acrylonitrile (AN), C H N, first became an important polymeric building block in the 1940s. Although it had been discovered in 1893 (1), its unique properties were not realized until the development of nitrile mbbers during World War II (see Elastomers, synthetic, nitrile rubber) and the discovery of solvents for the homopolymer with resultant fiber appHcations (see Fibers, acrylic) for textiles and carbon fibers. As a comonomer, acrylonitrile (qv) contributes hardness, rigidity, solvent and light resistance, gas impermeabiUty, and the abiUty to orient. These properties have led to many copolymer apphcation developments since 1950. 

Sodium Hydroxide. Before World War 1, nearly all sodium hydroxide [1310-93-2], NaOH, was produced by the reaction of soda ash and lime. The subsequent rapid development of electrolytic production processes, resulting from growing demand for chlorine, effectively shut down the old lime—soda plants except in Eastern Europe, the USSR, India, and China. Recent changes in chlorine consumption have reduced demand, putting pressure on the price and availabiHty of caustic soda (NaOH). Because this trend is expected to continue, there is renewed interest in the lime—soda production process. EMC operates a 50,000 t/yr caustic soda plant that uses this technology at Green River it came onstream in mid-1990. Other U.S. soda ash producers have aimounced plans to constmct similar plants (1,5). 

The first reported synthesis of acrylonitrile [107-13-1] (qv) and polyacrylonitrile [25014-41-9] (PAN) was in 1894. The polymer received Htde attention for a number of years, until shortly before World War II, because there were no known solvents and the polymer decomposes before reaching its melting point. The first breakthrough in developing solvents for PAN occurred at I. G. Farbenindustrie where fibers made from the polymer were dissolved in aqueous solutions of quaternary ammonium compounds, such as ben2ylpyridinium chloride, or of metal salts, such as lithium bromide, sodium thiocyanate, and aluminum perchlorate. Early interest in acrylonitrile polymers (qv), however, was based primarily on its use in synthetic mbber (see Elastomers, synthetic). 

Commencing in the late 1930s, new developments to make very strong yams allowed the viscose rayon to replace cotton as the fiber of choice for longer life pneumatic tires. The pace of this line of development increased during World War II, and by the 1960s a significant part of the production of viscose yam was for tires and industrial appHcations. 

From 1910 onward waste filament yam had been chopped into short lengths suitable for use on the machinery designed to process cotton and wool staples into spun yams. In the 1930s new plants were built specifically to supply the staple fiber markets. During World War II the production of staple matched that of filament, and by 1950, staple viscose was the most important product. The new spun-yam oudets spawned a series of viscose developments aimed at matching the characteristics of wool and cotton more closely. Viscose rayon was, after all, silk-like. Compared with wool it lacked bulk, residence, and abrasion resistance. Compared to cotton, it was weaker, tended to shrink and crease more easily, and had a rather lean, limp hand. 

AH these early inflation processes (41) were difficult to control, and after World War 11 they were neglected until the 1960s. Companies in Japan, the United States, and Europe then started to develop inflated—collapsed rayons (Eig. 5b) for speciaUty papers (42) and wet-laid nonwovens. 

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