Chlorine

Chlorine (from the Greek language Chloros, meaning "pale green"), is the chemical element with atomic number 17 and symbol Cl. It is a halogen, found in the periodic table in group 17. As part of common salt and other compounds, it is abundant in nature and necessary to most forms of life, including the human body. As chlorine gas, it is greenish yellow, is two and one half times as heavy as air, has an intensely disagreeable suffocating odor, and is exceedingly poisonous. In its liquid and solid form it is a powerful oxidizing, bleaching, and disinfecting agent.

Applications

Chlorine is an important chemical in water purification, in disinfectants in bleach and in mustard gas.

Related Topics:
Water purification - Disinfectant - Bleach - Mustard gas

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Chlorine is also used widely in the manufacture of many everyday items.

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• Used (in the form of hypochlorous acid) to kill bacteria and other microbes from drinking water supplies and swimming pools. Even small water supplies are now routinely chlorinated. See chlorination.
• Used widely in paper product production, antiseptic, dyestuffs, food, insecticides, paints, petroleum products, plastics, medicines, textiles, solvents, and many other consumer products.

Organic chemistry uses this element extensively as an oxidizing agent and in substitution because chlorine often imparts many desired properties in an organic compound when it is substituted for hydrogen (as in synthetic rubber production).

Related Topics:
Organic chemistry - Substitution - Organic compound - Hydrogen - Synthetic rubber

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Other uses are in the production of chlorates, chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, and in the bromine extraction.

Related Topics:
Chloroform - Carbon tetrachloride - Bromine

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