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Glycerine in Bar Soaps
Published in Eric Jungermann, Norman O.V. Sonntag, Glycerine, 2018
saponify a variety of animal and plant fats. An important point in the history of soapmaking occurred early in the nineteenth century with the development of the LeBlanc process for the large-scale manufacture of caustic soda. This transformed soapmaking from a cottage industry to an important industrial process.
The Chemical Industry: An Overview
Published in Richard J. Sundberg, The Chemical Century, 2017
The Solvay process was much cleaner and more efficient than the LeBlanc process and was adopted rapidly in continental Europe. It was introduced into Britain by Ludwig Mond and John Brunner, who founded a company to use the method.b The new competition led the companies using the LeBlanc process to join together as United Alkali. These two companies became the foundation of the modern chemical industry in Britain. The Solvay process was operated in the United States by Allied Chemical, Michigan Alkali (later Wyandotte) and by Pittsburg Plate Glass (later PPG).
The Thermodynamics of Chemical Reactions
Published in Juan H. Vera, Grazyna Wilczek-Vera, Classical Thermodynamics of Fluid Systems, 2016
Juan H. Vera, Grazyna Wilczek-Vera
In 1791, Leblanc proposed a method to carry out the reaction with the help of sulfuric acid. The Leblanc process was replaced by the more economical Solvay process, proposed in 1861. Variations of the Solvay scheme have been proposed, but they do not change the basic feature of the process presented in Figure 19.3, together with the reactions in each unit.
George E. Davis (1850–1907): Transition From Consultant Chemist to Consultant Chemical Engineer in a Period of Economic Pressure
Published in Ambix, 2020
What was the nature of the critical transformation in the British chemical industry between 1870 and the early 1900s that formed the backdrop to Davis’s framework of chemical engineering? Before 1870 there were few sectors to the industry and a limited range of chemical products: alkali (principally sodium carbonate by the Leblanc process), acids (sulfuric, hydrochloric and nitric), dyestuffs and fertilisers.1 Chemical plant was quite simple and its operation quite crude, making production inefficient and wasteful. Pollution of land, rivers and canals, and the air was widespread. Few chemists were employed (until the 1860s and 70s), and most proprietors of chemical businesses had limited knowledge of chemistry but were entrepreneurs who had recognised a good business opportunity. Any modifications to plant or operation necessitated recruiting a consultant with the relevant expertise.2 From the 1870s a proliferation of ever more sophisticated chemicals (especially organic chemicals) necessitated ever more intricate plant with finer control of its operations, most notably for synthetic derivatives of the natural dyes alizarin and indigo.3