{"id":13404,"date":"2023-07-25T04:07:45","date_gmt":"2023-07-24T22:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=13404"},"modified":"2025-04-02T04:05:58","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T22:35:58","slug":"what-is-fluorine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/what-is-fluorine\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Fluorine?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About Fluorine:\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fluorine comes from a <strong>calcium salt called calcium fluoride<\/strong>, or fluorspar.<\/li>\n<li>Fluorspar is mined and then treated with sulphuric acid at a high temperature to release hydrogen fluoride (HF).<\/li>\n<li>Hydrogen fluoride is then made to react with other compounds to <strong>create fluorochemicals.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Fluorine is a highly reactive element used to make fluorochemicals,<\/li>\n<li>It is used to produce plastics, <strong>agrochemicals, lithium-ion batteries, and drugs.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Issues with hydrogen fluoride<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>A major downside of this process is that HF is an <strong>extremely poisonous and corrosive liquid <\/strong>that irritates the eyes and respiratory tract even at low concentrations.<\/li>\n<li>t also <strong>requires special transportation and storage<\/strong> requirements.<\/li>\n<li>Hydrogen fluoride spills have occurred numerous times in the last decades, sometimes with fatal accidents and detrimental <strong>environmental effects.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>New procedure to obtain fluorine atoms<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>To avoid HF and to make the extraction process requires less energy, the researchers took inspiration from how the human body makes bones and teeth: through <strong>calcium phosphate biomineralisation.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>They ground fluorspar in a ball-mill with <strong>potassium phosphate.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>While fluorine is very reactive, calcium atoms prefer phosphorus even more, so the milling created calcium phosphate and another compound with fluorine atoms. They called the latter Fluoromix.<\/li>\n<li>When Fluoromix was reacted with organic compounds, <strong>it could create around 50 fluorochemicals <\/strong>with up to 98% yield.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1) What is the role of calcium in the human body?<\/h3>\n<p>Calcium is an essential mineral for the human body, playing a crucial role in various biological processes, including bone formation, muscle contraction, nerve function, and blood clotting.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/sci-tech\/science\/fluorspar-hydrogen-fluoride-fluorochemicals-mechanochemistry-fluoromix\/article67115217.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Chemistry breakthrough makes fluorochemicals production safer<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fluorine comes from a calcium salt called calcium fluoride, or fluorspar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}