Paraffin is a white or colorless soft solid wax. It is made from saturated hydrocarbons. Colorless, tasteless and tasteless, it is often used in skin softening salons and spas for hands, cuticle and feet. It can also be used to relieve joint and muscle pain.

Attribution of Paraffin wax

Paraffin wax is mostly a white, odorless, tasteless, waxy solid with a typical melting point of about 46 to 68°C (115 to 154°F) and a density of about 900 kg/m3. It is insoluble in water, but soluble in ether, benzene and certain esters. Paraffin is unaffected by most common chemicals but burns easily. Its heat of combustion is 42 megajoules per kilogram.

Paraffin is an excellent electrical insulator with a resistivity between 1013 and 1017 ohm meters. That's better than almost every other material except some plastics, especially TEflon. It is an effective neutron moderator and was used to identify neutrons in James Chadwick's 1932 experiment.

Paraffin is a good heat storage material with a specific heat capacity of 2.14 -- 2.9 J g−1 k −1 (joule/g Kelvin) and a fusion heat of 200 -- 220 J g− 1.In the early 1970s, paraffin phase-change cooling was combined with a telescopic radiator to cool lunar rover electronics during manned missions to the Moon. Wax expands significantly when melted, making it suitable for industrial, domestic, and especially automotive wax element thermostats.

History of Paraffin

Paraffin was first invented in 1830 by The German chemist Karl von Reichenbach as he tried to develop methods for efficiently separating and refining the waxy substance naturally present in petroleum. Paraffin was a big step forward in candle manufacturing because it burned cleanly and reliably and cost less to make than any other candle fuel. Paraffin wax has a low initial melting point; However, this was later compensated for by the addition of harder stearic acid. Paraffin production boomed in the early 20th century as petroleum and meat processing industries developed and paraffin and stearic acid became by-products.

Manufacturing of paraffin wax

The raw material of paraffin wax is paraffin wax, which is a mixture of oil and wax and is a by-product of lubricating oil refining.

The first step in making paraffin wax is to remove the oil (deoiling or dewaxing) from the slack wax. Oil is separated by crystallization. Most commonly, the relaxation wax is heated, mixed with one or more solvents, such as ketones, and then cooled. As it cools, the wax crystallizes out of the solution, leaving only the oil. The mixture is filtered into two strands: solid (wax with some solvent) and liquid (oil and solvent). After the solvent is recovered by distillation, the resulting product is called "product wax" (or "press wax") and "foot oil". The lower the percentage of oil in a wax, the more refined it is considered (semi-refined vs. fully refined). Product waxes can be further processed to remove color and odor. Waxes can eventually be mixed together to obtain certain desired properties, such as melting point and permeability. Paraffin wax is sold in liquid or solid form.