The vessel had leaked and, it was later confirmed, a trace of oxygen was present in the fresh ethylene that had been added to the reaction vessel to replace the leaked gas. The fresh ethylene contained, by chance, the right amount of oxygen to act as an initiator. He was speaking at a Royal Society of Chemistry meeting in to commemorate the discovery of PE, also known as polythene.
For once it didn't explode - usually it did - and we thought something must be wrong. So we left it to cool overnight. And when I looked inside the metal container the next day, I found what looked like a lump of sugar. In fact, that 'sugar' was polythene. A member of ICI's dyestuffs division, Bernard Habgood, recognized that PE could supersede gutta-percha, a natural material, for insulation of submarine cables.
This provided the impetus to proceed to commercial scale production. During the development of radar in the early war years it had proved difficult to insulate the equipment to prevent power loss and thus preserve the strength of the signal.
PE's electrical insulation properties enabled the British forces to reduce the weight of radar equipment and allowed them to place radars inside fighter planes. This provided an enormous technical advantage in long-distance warfare, most significantly in the Battle of the Atlantic against German submarines.
Ziegler was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Did you know that polyethylene played a key supporting role during World War II? It was first used as an underwater cable coating and then as a critical insulating material for vital military applications as radar insulation. This is because it was so light and thin that it made placing radar onto airplanes possible thus vastly reducing the weigh.
The substance was a highly guarded secret. After the war, polyethylene became a tremendous hit with consumers It became the first plastic in the United States to sell more than a billion pounds a year.
It is currently the largest volume plastic in the world. Today, Polyethylene has the advantages of excellent moisture-vapor , chemical, and electrical resistance. Combined, all polyethylene production totals 60 million tons every single year. In , German chemist Hans von Pechmann discovered polyethylene by complete accident.
He discovered the white, waxy material while heating diazomethane. When his colleagues saw what he had created they noticed it had long —CH 2 — chains and they named it polyethylene. Once again, this valuable discovery was made by accident. We use LLDPE to create many of our products thanks to its advanced strength, long lasting qualities, flexibility and more. This is no ordinary plastic.
As a result of the material and process, our products are highly resistant to breaking, shattering, and cracking even when hit with great force or dropped from the top of a building.
It was found that the long chain, low density white polymer could be extruded as film and coated around wires and cables to give greatly enhanced performance. Polythene was a superb insulator with high dielectric and low loss factor and was thus in great demand for submarine cables, radar applications, etc.
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