What Are The Uses Of Halogen-Containing Hydrocarbons?
Some are still used for operating theatre anaesthetics (halothane), and carbon tetrachloride is used as a solvent and a softener for some plastics, which are also common halogen-hydrocarbon compounds, eg PVC (polyvinyl chloride). PTFE (poytetrafluoroethene, or polytetrafluoroethylene if you’re old school, like me) is still used as a non-stick coating, a load for urban warfare bullets (!) as it is very dense, as a container to hold hydrofluoric acid (HF) and as a liner for pressure reaction vessels (known, strangely enough, as “bombs”). Benzalkonium chloride is used to kill germs in the food industry, and other fluro and chloro hydrocarbons are still used where efficient cooling is required in laboratories. Polychlorinated biphenyls are used in the oil that high-power transformers are sealed in, and nearly all of the current crop of defoliants and pesticides contain chloro-, fluoro- or bromo- groups. The original DDT contains two chlorinated phenol rings joined to a CHCl3 group. There a
