Lesson plan
Brin process
Brin process is a now-obsolete industrial scale production process for oxygen. In this process barium oxide reacts at 500–600 °C with air to form barium peroxide which decomposes at above 800 °C by releasing oxygen. :2 BaO + O 2 ⇌ 2 BaO 2 The reaction was discovered by Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thenard in 1811 and Jean-Baptiste Boussingault tried to use this reaction to establish a process to produce oxygen in 1852. The process worked only for a few cycles and then became inefficient. Two students of Boussingault, Quentin and Arthur Leon Brin, discovered that traces of carbon dioxide formed barium carbonate. Removing the carbon dioxide with sodium hydroxide solved this problem. In 1884 they opened a factory producing oxygen by their improved process. In the commercial process, oxygen capture and release was controlled by pressure rather than temperature, with oxygen being captured at high pressure and released at low pressure. This allowed a faster change between the capture and release phases, which would last one to two hours. The company was first named Brins Oxygen Company after the two brothers. In 1906 it was renamed as the British Oxygen Company. One major application of the oxygen was the use for limelight.…
Article summary
Brin process is a now-obsolete industrial scale production process for oxygen. In this process barium oxide reacts at 500–600 °C with air to form barium peroxide which decomposes at above 800 °C by releasing oxygen. :2 BaO + O 2 ⇌ 2 BaO 2 The reaction was discovered by Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thenard in 1811 and Jean-Baptiste Boussingault tried to use this reaction to establish a process to produce oxygen in 1852. The process worked only for a few cycles and then became inefficient. Two students of Boussingault, Quentin and Arthur Leon Brin, discovered that traces of carbon dioxide formed barium carbonate. Removing the carbon dioxide with sodium hydroxide solved this problem. In 1884 they opened a factory producing oxygen by their improved process. In the commercial process, oxygen capture and release was controlled by pressure rather than temperature, with oxygen being captured at high pressure and released at low pressure. This allowed a faster change between the capture and release phases, which would last one to two hours. The company was first named Brins Oxygen Company after the two brothers. In 1906 it was renamed as the British Oxygen Company. One major application of the oxygen was the use for limelight.…
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
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