Carbon compounds and chemical industries

SCIENCE IN ACTION

MICHAEL JOHN UGLO
WELCOME on board to this final lecture on matter which is on carbon compounds.
It is a huge topic because of the applications of the carbon compounds both in natural and artificial synthesis of chemical compounds. This will lead us into the chemical industries in PNG and the world in retrospect for the synthesis of the chemical substances in chemical industries.
The use of carbon compounds in chemical industries brought about superb revolutionary changes like never before. They support food production or food manufacture together with food distribution and movement around the world for the world people’s convenience and survival. There are multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies as well distributing massive life-saving drug supplies around the world as well.
Carbon compounds
Carbon compounds are the chemical substances that contain the element carbon as their main constituent part. Carbon is the principle element contained in organic substances such as proteins, starch, fats and lipids. Carbon is one of the main elements that is found in all living things. Surprisingly, carbon can be found included in metals as well. Alloys such as steel are made from combining carbon with iron.
The plentiful supply of carbon is the main component of all living things. The organic or living things’ carbon can be made in the laboratories. This is the reason for millions of carbon compounds known in today’s world.
Carbon is found in the group four elements because they have four electrons in their outermost shells. That is, they are tetravalent. Hence, they can be electropositive or show positive characters when they interact with more electronegative elements like non-metallic elements. They can also show electronegative characters when they interact with more electropositive elements like the metals group one, group two and group three elements.
The element carbon can form both positive ions called carbocations as well as negative ions called carbanions. Carbon can react with oxygen to form oxides as well as nitrogen and sulfur.
Carbon can appear in different forms called allotropes. The main allotropes of carbon are called diamond, graphite and fullerenes. The buckminsterfullerene is of an interesting character. It can trap a metallic atom and therefore react with other electronegative elements.
Carbon can interact with halogens to form compounds as well. Such compounds include carbon tetrachloride, carbon tetrabromide, carbon tetrafluoride and carbon tetraiodide. Carboranes are the next group of compounds that are formed when carbon interacts with the element bromine.
We also have alloys that carbon is used at certain fractions to produce them. Such alloys include steel, brass, bronze and so many others. Carbon can also be naturally used alongside elements such as aluminum for manufacture of aluminum products, platinum with graphite electrodes at electrolytic refinery cells and so on.
An interesting new field is seen when carbon can combine with metallic elements. The compounds that are formed in this combination and reaction are called organometallic compounds.
Natural resources and chemical industries in PNG
Atoms form elements as pure substances as a building blocks of any substance. Pure substances also include molecules. Molecules are made of two or more elements chemically joined and also appear as single and indivisible units. Natural as well as artificial manipulation of these basic units of matter has enabled production of substances that are of huge benefit.
In the natural resources sector, in the world and in PNG like the elements gold, silver, copper, methane gas known as LNG (liquified natural gas) are the common resources. Other natural resources are nickel and crude oil or so-called rock products called petroleum.

These resources have formed so many years ago in geologic time scale through the process of decomposition and mineralisation. Plants and animals of past years have decomposed and their carbon and hydrogen element compositions have accumulated in crude oil to form petroleum products to produce hydrocarbon fuel and by products like paraffin, glycerin and pharmaceutical products.
Paraffin is used for sealing and as the waxy substance used in candles as well as in waterproofing products. In glycerin, the substance is extracted from oil that can be used for cosmetics as well as medicine. Oil is the dense hydrocarbon petroleum product that contains unrefined massive amounts of a compound containing principally the elements carbon and hydrogen that become the raw material base for these many uses.
There is gold mining at Lihir in New Ireland and Pogera in Enga. There was copper mined in Panguna in Bouganvile. Currently inoperation is Ok Tedi copper mine. Nickel and cobalt are being mined currently in Ramu in Madang. Liquified natural gas (LNG) which is liquified methane gas being the first alkane member in the alkane series of the hydrocarbon compounds is extracted in Hela. It is a high energy and highly combustible compressed gas that when allowed to burn in oxygen will produce so much energy.
There is also oil extracted in Kutubu in Southern Highlands. There are a lot of explorations going on in PNG for these precious metals, oil and gas at the moment in which some have already been identified for production like Wafi gold mine in Morobe. Also, the French company Total is going to mine in the second biggest oil and gas project in the Gulf. The mineralisation process in which these precious elements have accumulated took so many years to form.
Chemical industries
The chemical industry in PNG is a smaller picture of what is seen in the world today. A chemical by name is a substance of a known composition of its atomic structure. A chemical substance will be known to contain one particular atom of an element or two or more atoms of different elements combined in a chemical reaction.
Chemical industries are specialised to produce one particular chemical substance that is a useful product that people can use in everyday life. Such uses will include agriculture. Such chemicals will include fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides and stock feeds.
Other uses include the different kinds of drugs to treat diseases and also in the cosmetics industry.

The bigger picture in the world includes consumer chemicals, pharmaceuticals, inorganic chemicals, fine and specialty chemicals for specific purposes as well as polymers such as plastics and petrochemicals. Petrochemical products are substances that are made from crude oil or the petroleum known as rock products.
Chemical industries provide the starting materials in the production of very important substances like detergents with soap, textiles, paints, varnish, toilet goods, polymers, rubber (elastomers), paper, pharmaceutical, fragrances, flavours with agricultural chemicals as fertilizers and pesticides. Chemical industries allow for keeping the quality of food for export or import in PNG or any country around the world.
The drawbacks seen in the use of the chemicals is pollution in water bodies including underground water, air pollution from factory exhausts, acid rain as chemicals accumulate in the atmosphere mixing with water vapor in the presence of sunlight providing the activation energy forming acids. They then fall as acid rain.
When chemicals from agricultural lands get washed into lakes, they accumulate and become nutrient-rich creating the condition called eutrophication or cultural eutrophication. That is when plants like algae feed on these rich nutrient-endowed water bodies and bloom.
During that process they deplete all the dissolved oxygen found in the interstices of the water molecules. This results in the dying out of fish and other aquatic organisms in that particular water body because they cannot extract oxygen from water molecules for them to breathe.
The dying out and decaying of the dead leaves also depletes more dissolved oxygen from that water body because those organisms called the detritivores extract dissolved oxygen as well for their respiration and survival.

My Prayer for PNG today is: “Christ our Lord, with love enormous. From the cross, this lesson taught. Love all man as I have loved you. All I own and all I do, I give to you.”
Next week: Sciences of organisms

• Michael Uglo is the author of the science textbook “Science in PNG, Pacific, Asia &and Caribbean” and a lecturer in avionics, auto-piloting and aircraft engineering. Please send comments to: [email protected]