| Home > Material > Occasionally Used Materials > Fluorocarbons |
Fluorocarbons |
Fluorocarbons, as depicted by their name, are a chemical bond of fluorine and carbons atoms. These compounds are developed to cater the requirements of corrosion resistance from insect repellent, gas or battery acid and sun damage.
Production Process:
Earlier, fluorocarbon was prepared by directly reacting fluorine with the hydrocarbon. This process was carried out using a highly exothermic reaction which used to release energy in high amount. Moreover, it synthesized only tetrafluoromethane, hexafluoroethane and octafluoropropane.
These days, fluorocarbon is produced in a large scale using a process called the ‘Fowler’. This process, constitutes of fluorination of cobalt difluoride to cobalt trifluoride followed by adding the hydrocarbon feed then fluorinating it by the cobalt trifluoride, which is converted back to cobalt difluoride.
There is another process that is sometimes employed to produce fluorocarbons, known as the Simon's Process. It involves electrolysis of a substrate dissolved in hydrogen fluoride.
Physical properties of Fluorocarbons:
- Fluorocarbons are colourless and have two times more density than that of water.
- These are not miscible with organic solvents like ethanol, acetone, ethyl acetate and chloroform.
- These are miscible with hydrocarbons like hexane in some cases.
- They possess very low solubility in water and vice-versa.
- They also have low refractive indices.
- Unsaturated fluorocarbons are more reactive than Fluoroalkenes or Fluoroalkynes.
- Saturated fluorocarbons display more chemical and thermal stability than their corresponding hydrocarbon counterparts.
Physical Properties of Fluorocarbons:
This chemical bond does not soak up water or elongate like nylon and is almost undetectable under the water surface due to its rate of light refraction, which is equivalent to the rate of refraction of light in water.
Applications of Fluorocarbons:
These are used to reduce surface tension instantly by concentrating at the liquid air interface due to the lipophobicity of fluorocarbons, due to the polar functional group added to the fluorocarbon chain.
|
| |
| |
 |
