Article | REF: J6380 V1

The iodine

Authors: Pierre BLAZY, El-Aïd JDID

Publication date: June 10, 2009

You do not have access to this resource.
Click here to request your free trial access!

Already subscribed? Log in!


Overview

Français

ABSTRACT

Present in nature in the form of iodide and iodate, iodine is a solid halogen at normal temperature. Used in medicine as well as in the pharmaceutical and food industry, this element, colored shiny grey to purple black, is an easily fusible and sublimable soft solid. The natural oil and gas field brines contain iodine concentrations of around 130 ppm in Japan and 1,300 ppm in the USA; it is recovered by air blowing or separation on resins. Brow algae can contain up to 4,500 pm of iodine after drying. And the iodine is also a co-product of nitrates from Chili and phosphates from China. Concerning phosphate ores, iodine is evaporated during calcination and recovered via absorption in a sodium solution.

Read this article from a comprehensive knowledge base, updated and supplemented with articles reviewed by scientific committees.

Read the article

AUTHORS

  • Pierre BLAZY: Honorary Professor - Former Director, École nationale supérieure de géologie (ENSG)

  • El-Aïd JDID: Research engineer at the Environment and Mineralurgy Laboratory (LEM), UMR 7569, Nancy University (ENSG-INPL), CNRS

 INTRODUCTION

Iodine is a solid halogen at ordinary temperatures. It occurs in nature as iodide and iodate. Seawater contains only 0.05 ppm iodine, but natural brines from oil and gas deposits have concentrations of around 130 ppm in Japan and 1,300 ppm in the USA, and marine organisms such as brown algae can contain up to 4,500 ppm after drying. In addition to these large iodine reserves, we should also mention Chile's nitrate deposits, known as "caliches", where iodine appears as a co-product of their exploitation, at an average content of around 400 ppm. Iodine is also a co-product of Chinese phosphates.

From the caliche, the iodine is leached and recovered by flotation, extraction in kerosene and blowing out process.

Iodine is recovered from brines by air blowing or resin separation.

For phosphate ores, iodine is volatilized during calcination and recovered by absorption in a sodium solution.

Chile and Japan dominate the world iodine market, although there are a dozen other producing countries.

Iodine has many uses. It is used in medicine, in the pharmaceutical industry, in the food industry, in industrial catalysis, etc.

Throughout the dossier, contents are given on a mass basis.

Remember that 1 ppm = 1 part per million, in this case 1 g/t.

You do not have access to this resource.

Exclusive to subscribers. 97% yet to be discovered!

You do not have access to this resource.
Click here to request your free trial access!

Already subscribed? Log in!


The Ultimate Scientific and Technical Reference

A Comprehensive Knowledge Base, with over 1,200 authors and 100 scientific advisors
+ More than 10,000 articles and 1,000 how-to sheets, over 800 new or updated articles every year
From design to prototyping, right through to industrialization, the reference for securing the development of your industrial projects

This article is included in

Unit operations. Chemical reaction engineering

This offer includes:

Knowledge Base

Updated and enriched with articles validated by our scientific committees

Services

A set of exclusive tools to complement the resources

Practical Path

Operational and didactic, to guarantee the acquisition of transversal skills

Doc & Quiz

Interactive articles with quizzes, for constructive reading

Subscribe now!

Ongoing reading
Iodine