Synthesis
Sulfur mustard is the organic compound with formula (Cl-CH2CH2)2S. In the Depretz method, sulfur mustard is synthesized by treating sulfur dichloride with ethylene:
- SCl2 + 2 C2H4 → (Cl-CH2CH2)2S
In the Levinstein process, sulfur monochloride is used instead:
- 8 S2Cl2 + 16 C2H4 → 8 (Cl-CH2CH2)2S + S8
In the Meyer method, thiodiglycol is produced from chloroethanol and potassium sulfide and chlorinated with phosphorus trichloride:
- 3 (HO-CH2CH2)2S + 2 PCl3 → 3 (Cl-CH2CH2)2S + 2 P(OH)3
In the Meyer-Clarke method, concentrated hydrochloric acid (HCl) instead of PCl3 is used as the chlorinating agent:
- (HO-CH2CH2)2S + 2 HCl → (Cl-CH2CH2)2S + 2 H2O
Thionyl chloride and phosgene have also been used as chlorinating agents.
It is a viscous liquid at normal temperatures. The pure compound has a melting point of 14 °C (57 °F) and decomposes before boiling at 218 °C (424.4 °F).
Read more about this topic: Sulfur Mustard
Famous quotes containing the word synthesis:
“The invention of photography provided a radically new picture-making process—a process based not on synthesis but on selection. The difference was a basic one. Paintings were made—constructed from a storehouse of traditional schemes and skills and attitudes—but photographs, as the man on the street put, were taken.”
—Jean Szarkowski (b. 1925)
“The new shopping malls make possible the synthesis of all consumer activities, not least of which are shopping, flirting with objects, idle wandering, and all the permutations of these.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Our art is the finest, the noblest, the most suggestive, for it is the synthesis of all the arts. Sculpture, painting, literature, elocution, architecture, and music are its natural tools. But while it needs all of those artistic manifestations in order to be its whole self, it asks of its priest or priestess one indispensable virtue: “faith.””
—Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923)