Who discovered propylene?

Question

Does anyone know who discovered propylene?

Or the ancient usage of propylene?

I can't find any websites that has this information...


Thanks.

Answer 1

The chain reaction polymerization process for producing polypropylene was first developed in 1954 by Giulio Natta. He used a catalyst discovered by Karl Ziegler to produce polypropylene from propylene. This reaction was important because it could be run at room temperature and low pressures. The first commercial production of polypropylene occurred in 1957 by Montecatini in Italy. It rapidly became a significant industrial compound because of its good physical and economic properties. For their work, Ziegler and Natta were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963.

Answer 2

Excellent question. I have never seen anything about this in any chem book. In Organic books, they get into unsaturated compounds without any mention of their history or any attribution to the old chemists. Ethylene (or ethene IUPAC name) is a constituient of most natural gas and as far as I know was just used as part of a mixture for burning. I would guess the old German chemists in industry might have separated it from the mixture to see if it were better for producing heat. It really wouldn't have much use until we started polymerizing unsaturated compounds to form polymers. Polymerizing ethylene would give polyethylene which was a really weak and mostly useless polymer until the discovery of Ziegler-Natta catalysts which allowed high molecular weight linear polymers of it to be formed. sorry, I know this isn't really an answer, but I would like to know the answer also.

Answer 3

Karl Zeigler

http://www.nyas.org/programs/nobel/essay4.html

Answer 4

Still the big question! Who discovered propylene not polypropylene. All we know is who discovered polypropylene(Giulio Natta). Who discovered propylene?

Answer 5

Dupont ?