Chlorine

Chlorine

      Who is chlorine? Chlorine is a non metal and identified as atomic number 17. It does not conduct electricity very well or heat, it is not full of luster and it is very brittle. Chlorine is a greenish yellow gas. (Kind of ugly right?) Chlorine appears to be ugly and useless but in all reality it is one of the most important elements. Chlorine is a part of the halogen group, which is an elite group of the nonmetals. It is the second lightest halogen after fluorine. Chloride is the third highest electronegative element of all the elements!
     Chlorine was first produced in 1774 in Sweden by Carl Wilhelm Scheele. Scheele was a German- Swedish pharmaceutical chemist. Isaac Asimov called him "hard-luck Scheele" because he made a number of chemical discoveries in his lifetime sooner than others who are generally given the credit. Scheele collected the gas released by the reaction of pyrolusite (manganese dioxide) and spiritus salis (an alchemical term meaning spirit/breath of salt.) Spiritus salis are also known as hydrochloric acid. The new gas had, according to what Scheele stated, “A very perceptible suffocating smell, which was most oppressive to the lungs… and gives the water a slightly acidic taste… the air in it acquires a yellow color…
     Chlorine doesn't occur naturally by itself in nature. Most commonly it takes the form of the chloride ion as part of a salt that's either found in the earth, or dissolved in seawater. It is rarely necessary to make chlorine in the laboratory as it is readily available 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 electrolysis. Electrolysis of molten salt, NaCl, also succeeds, in which case the other product is sodium metal rather than sodium hydroxide. Na+ + Cl- + H2O → Na+ + 1/2Cl2 + 1/2H2 + OH- In the laboratory under carefully controlled conditions, chlorine can be made by the action of an oxidizing agent such as manganese dioxide, MnO2, upon concentrated hydrochloric acid - the same reaction used by Scheele in 1774 when discovering chlorine. MnO2 + 4HCl → MnCl2 + Cl2 + 2H2O
     Chlorine has many different uses. For example it is a water purifier. Without Chlorine we wouldn't be able to drink clean and pure water. Chlorine helps fight against waterborne microbiological infections. These infections are highly dangerous. Every year 5 million people die of these infections even with Chlorine. So just imagine the world without Chlorine. No water would be completely safe to drink. We need a lot of water to survive so without Chlorine it would be very difficult to survive for very long. Chlorine is also used in 2 million jobs in Europe. 85% of medicines are made using Chlorine chemistry. Also it is used in 96% crop protection used by farmers.

      I bet many of you LOVE to be involved sports including swimming, soccer, golf, tennis and surfing. Well I know you didn't know that chlorine plays a part in all of those sports. It used to make golf bags, surfboards, tennis rackets and wet suits. Good luck playing your favorite sports without chlorine. Hospitals and medicine rely on chlorine for many different purposes as well. Hospitals use chlorine to keep it clean and disinfected. It can also prevent bacterial contamination of patient’s burns and wounds. Chlorine disinfects many surfaces in the hospital too keeping it safe. It can clean the air in hospitals as well preventing Legionnaire’s disease which can lives in the vents of hospitals. Many different medicines rely on chlorine to be produced. Some of these include Clometacin analgesic (pain killer), Clonazepam anticonvulsant (prevents convulsions of the heart), and Clobutinol antitussive (suppresses coughing).

     Everyone and their cousin know about Chlorine. If you own a pool or simply like to drink clean water you have heard about Chlorine. What would this world be like without Chlorine? Dirty drinking water and pools would have algae up the wazoo! Think of all the diseases, you think getting a cold is bad, picture getting a life threatening disease from drinking the water in your kitchen sink. Chlorine has been proven to be a lifesaver! Where would we be without it? A world where Chlorine does not exist is a world not worth living in.