by : Hannah Craig
USES
· production of safe drinking water the world over. Even the smallest water supplies are now usually chlorinated
· extensively used in the production of paper products, dye stuffs, textiles, petroleum products, medicines, antiseptics, insecticides, foodstuffs, solvents, paints, plastics, and many other consumer products
· most chlorine is used in the manufacture of chlorinated cleaning compounds, pulp bleaching, disinfectants, and textile processing/manufacture of chlorates, chloroform, carbon tetrachloride
· PVC pipe used to provide safe drinking water
Basic Information
Name: Chlorine
Symbol: Cl
Atomic Number: 17
Atomic Mass: 35.4527 amu
Melting Point: -100.98 °C (172.17 K, -149.764 °F)
Boiling Point: -34.6 °C (238.55 K, -30.279997 °F)
Number of Protons/Electrons: 17
Number of Neutrons: 18
Family name: Halogen
Color: green
Period: 3
Group: 7a
Characteristics:
Chlorine is a greenish-yellow, diatomic, dense gas with a sharp smell (the smell of bleach).
It is not found free in nature as it combines readily with nearly all other elements.
In its liquid and solid form it is a powerful bleaching, oxidizing and disinfecting agent.
Fun facts:
Some tree frogs contain a chlorine compound in their skin that is a very powerful pain killer, which is two hundred times more potent than any known pain killer. This chemical, when used in small doses, has no side effects; in large doses, however, it is fatal.
Chlorine was used in WW2 to kill soldiers because it’s a toxic gas.
Chlorine is a very dangerous material. Liquid chlorine burns the skin and gaseous chlorine irritates the mucus membranes. Concentrations of the gas as low as 3.5 parts per million can be detected by smell while concentrations of 1000 parts per million can be fatal after a few deep breaths.
History:
Chlorine was discovered in 1774 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele. He obtained it through the reaction of the mineral pyrolusite (manganese dioxide, MnO2) with hydrochloric acid (HCl, then known as muriatic acid). Scheele thought the resulting gas contained oxygen. Sir Humphry Davy proposed and confirmed chlorine to be an element in 1810, and he also named the element.
Word chlorine derived Greek word "chloros" meaning "pale green"
It is rarely necessary to make chlorine in the laboratory as it is readily available commercially in cylinders. Chlorine is found largely in seawater where it exists as sodium chloride. It is recovered as a reactive, corrosive, pale green chlorine gas from brine (a solution of sodium chloride in water) by electrolyis. Electrolysis of molten salt, NaCl, also succeeds, in which case the other product is sodium metal rather than sodium hydroxide.
Purification methods:
A method for chlorine purification in which crude chlorine containing nitrogen and/or oxygen is purified to separate the nitrogen and oxygen from the chloride, characterized in that the crude chlorine containing nitrogen and/or oxygen is contacted with 1,2-dichloroethane to cause the 1,2-dichloroethane to absorb the chlorine contained in the crude chlorine, and a process for producing 1,2-dichloroethane which comprises reacting ethylene with the chlorine contained in the chlorine containing 1,2-dichloroethane.