How long has oxygen been used in industry?

What industries apply oxygen for their purposes?

Does chemical industry rely on oxygen? In what way?

Can you match the following industries with oxygen-related purposes?

 

1. Metalworking industry __________________________________________________

2. Chemical industry ______________________________________________________

3. Space industry, aviation _________________________________________________

4.Medicine ____________________________________________________ _

5. Other_______________________________________________________________ _

 

metal cutting, respiration, oxidation processes, hardfacing, treatment of pneumonia, energy production, fuel burning, scuba-diving, welding, smelting iron ore, anti-freeze production, polymers production, metal refining, synthesis gas production, anesthetic (mixed with other gases), reaction rate boosting, water treatment, oxygen therapy, surface defects removing

TEXT A

Memorize the meaning of the following words and word combinations.

acetylene, actual, alloy, amount, application, apply, base, besides, broadly speaking, at lower cost, complicated, cutting, development, distillation, equipment, flame, foot (feet), fractional, hard facing, liquefaction, manufacture, (automobile, metal) parts, presence, process, recent, rectification, repair, require, on a commercial scale, separate, speed, surface defects, technically, be treated with, at the turn of the century, welding, while

 

Practise your pronunciation.

Acetylene, oxy-acetylene, calcium carbide, although, garage, automobile, manufacture, per cent, degrees Fahrenheit, degrees Celsius, purer, due to.

Make pairs of the words and word combinations in column A and those in column B and make up sentences with them.

	A		B
1.	different ways of	a)	liquid nitrogen
2.	a method to	b)	purposes
3.	a cold mixture of	c)	welding and cutting metals
4.	speed	d)	proper proportions
5.	industrial	e)	repairing the equipment
6.	treated with	f)	industry
7.	mixed in	g)	produce oxygen
8.	a process for	h)	application
9.	metalworking	i)	water
10.	spectacular	j)	progress

4. Read and translate the text.

 

MODERN USES OF OXYGEN

 

Although oxygen has been used in industry for more than 100 years, there has been interest in this colourless, odourless, tasteless gas for several hundred years. Its presence as an active element in the air was suspected as long ago as 1500 A.D., but only in 1777 Antoine Lavoisier, a French chemist, named oxygen and described its properties.

The actual development of the industrial application of oxygen for the next hundred years was extremely slow. Then, at the turn of the twentieth century, two factors greatly speeded the progress. One was a method for economically producing oxygen of high purity from the air, and the other was the method for producing calcium carbide on a commercial scale.

Probably 95 per cent of the huge volume of oxygen used today is obtained from the air by a process which was developed by Dr. Carl von Linde in Germany in 1895 and 1902. He based his method upon the liquefaction of air and its fractional distillation. Technically, the process is complicated, as it requires one of the lowest temperatures used industrially – more than 300ºF below zero (-194.4ºC). The liquid air is a very cold mixture of liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen. Oxygen is then separated by rectification. Most oxygen produced for industrial purposes is purer than 99 %.

Calcium carbide treated with water produces acetylene, a gas which burns in air with a brilliant white light. When the two gases, oxygen and acetylene are mixed in proper proportions and burned, their combustion produces the hottest flame known – more than 5400ºF (≈3000ºC). This flame for the past 100 years has formed the basis for the oxy-acetylene process for welding and cutting metals.

Today there is practically no industry which does not use the process. Broadly speaking, applications are divided into two fields – repair and production. The repair field is perhaps the better known, for practically every garage uses the oxy-acetylene process for repairing automobile parts. In industry, there is not a factory which does not use the process in many different ways for repairing the equipment.

Another process where acetylene is used is called "hardfacing". Extremely hard alloys are applied to the surfaces of metal parts that increase the life of the parts many times.

Certain industries have developed mostly due to welding. This is true in the manufacture of airplanes, automobiles, refrigerators, railway roads.

But the greatest amount of oxygen is used in cutting iron and steel – one of the most spectacular applications of oxygen in industry. This simple process has literally revolutionized metalworking industries. It was found that any cuts were made quite easily.

One of the most recent applications of oxy-acetylene process is for removing surface defects from steel. In this way, larger amounts of cleaner and better steel are made possible at lower cost.