Hydrogen Peroxide
The bleaching properties of hydrogen peroxide are used in many industries. Perhaps its most familiar day-to-day use is in proprietary products used in washing clothes, for example in some forms of VanishTM. Large quantities of hydrogen peroxide are used to make sodium perborate and sodium percarbonate, which are used as bleaching agents in liquid and solid detergents. Sodium perborate, NaBO3.4H2O, is made by adding hydrogen peroxide to a solution of sodium metaborate and sodium hydroxide. Sodium percarbonate is prepared by adding hydrogen peroxide to a solution of sodium carbonate.While its use in detergents accounts for large quantities of hydrogen peroxide, most is used in solution to bleach paper (increasing its brightness), wood pulp and fabrics. And recently, very large plants have come on stream in Antwerp (Belgium) and at the industrial complex at Map Ta Phut (Thailand). A third large plant is being built on the eastern seaboard of Saudi Arabia, on the Persian Gulf, at Jubail. All three plants will produce hydrogen peroxide which will be used to make epoxypropane (propylene oxide) by direct oxidation of propene. Epoxypropane will, in turn, be used principally to manufacture polyurethanes.
