Dear all,
I would like to have detailed information about the Deville process which was the first used for sodium metal production. From literature I found only data related to aluminum metal production.
Thank you.
Dear Dr. Noha Sabi ,
this is how the “Deville furnace” (Henry-Etienne Deville Sainte-Claire) works which produces metallic sodium from the reduction of Na2CO3 with coal, as sodium has a more negative reduction potential than carbon.
The reaction in question is the reduction of sodium carbonate with carbon by heating in an oven. Sodium carbonate powder and carbon powder were loaded into a metal or ceramic cylinder which had a hole on one end with a torch. The cylinder was heated inside a furnace by causing the opening torch to come out of the furnace. A container containing paraffin or mineral oil was placed underneath. The sodium carbonate reduction reaction is as follows: Na2CO3(s) + 2C (s) = 2Na (l) + 3CO (g) The reaction proceeded only when heated and the molten sodium (liquid) was expelled by the pressure generated by the carbon monoxide gas. Subsequently, the sodium leachate was cooled in paraffin or mineral oil to protect it from oxidation. The process takes place thanks to the entropy provided by the production of gas and heating. In fact, sodium carbonate tends to decompose upon heating under pressure into sodium oxide and carbon dioxide. The addition of carbon allows to reduce the sodium from the oxide to the metal. This was the first practical industrial process for obtaining metallic sodium. In this reaction, the sodium is reduced from Na + 1 to Na 0, the carbon of the bicarbonate anion is reduced from C + 4 to C + 2 and the added solid carbon oxidizes from C 0 to C + 2.
Source: vialattea.net (in Italian)
Available at: https://www.vialattea.net/content/669/
My best regards, Pierluigi Traverso.
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