A clean piece of work
Hydrogen peroxide
For over 90 years, Degussa has manufactured hydrogen peroxide, an environmentally friendly bleaching agent. Today it is produced by the group in Europe, North and South America, New Zealand and South Africa. With the purchase of Laporte plc, a London-based company, in April 2001, the product tradition now goes back even further. Bernhard Frederic Laporte, a German-born trader in chemicals started to produce and market hydrogen peroxide very successfully in Bradfort, in Yorkshire, England, in 1888. After 1945 Laporte's company became the largest supplier of hydrogen peroxide in the world.
The Deutsche Gold- und Silber-Scheideanstalt, today Degussa AG, started in a somewhat more modest way with the former Österreichische Chemische Werke (Austrian Chemical Works) in Weissenstein, a town in the Austrian province of Carinthia. In 1907/08 plans were made to set up a plant to manufacture hydrogen peroxide using electrolytics. However, due to a lack of financing, the building site remained idle. Degussa expressed great interest in the Weissenstein electrolytic process, as it could be used to produce perborat more easily and at a lower cost.
Perborat was an additive that Degussa was supplying in increasing quantities to Henkel for their “Persil” detergent. With Degussa’s financial backing, production finally began in Weissenstein in 1910.
By 1928, demand for hydrogen peroxide had become so great that Degussa set up its own manufacturing plant at its factory in Rheinfelden. Since then, production capacity worldwide has been expanded constantly with new manufacturing plants. The main reason why this active oxygen is so widely used is its varied applicability, which now goes far beyond its original use as the preliminary product of a washing powder additive. Hydrogen peroxide is essential as a bleach in the textile industry and in processing used paper. It is also used in hydrometallurgical processes, for example in leaching gold.
Hydrogen peroxide production today is part of the Building Blocks Business Unit at Degussa AG. Degussa produces approximately 600,000 tons of the bleaching agent annually, making it one of the leading suppliers in the world.
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