Walter Krönig

Walter Krönig (born June 16, 1900 , † April 27, 1989 ) was a German chemist and head of petrochemical research at Bayer AG paint factories in Leverkusen.

life and work

In 1922, Krönig became an assistant to Franz Fischer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim an der Ruhr , where, among other things, he worked on the physico-chemical properties of metal acetates and complexes.

In 1925 he moved to BASF , where Krönig worked in Matthias Pier's department. At that time, the focus of research was on the development of the Bergius-Pier process and other hydrogenation processes. In the post-war years he moved to Bayer AG. At this time, the chemical industry switched to crude oil as a chemical raw material. The focus of Krönig's work was on the use of the so-called C4 cut of pyrolysis , which consists of butanes , butenes , 1,3-butadiene and other hydrocarbons, including C4 acetylenes.

Krönig found a process for cold hydrogenation at temperatures of 10 to 20 ° C and a pressure of about 2 to 6 bar of the acetylenes occurring in the C4 cut, such as vinyl acetylene and ethyl acetylene, in the trickle phase, whereby the loss of the target product 1,3-butadiene remains low . A process for the production of acetic acid from butenes also goes back to Krönig.

Honors

The DGMK German Scientific Society for Petroleum and coal lent 1968 Walter Krönig the Carl Engler Medal for his work on the coal chemical and petrochemical industries.

Publications

• Walter Krönig: The catalytic pressure hydrogenation of coals, tars and mineral oils (The IG process by Matthias Pier) . Springer Verlag, 1950, (Reprint: 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-50105-0 )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Walter Krönig: About the thermal decomposition of some pure metal acetates. In: Journal for Applied Chemistry. 37, 1924, pp. 667-672, doi : 10.1002 / anie.19240373505 .
2. ^ Walter Krönig: Refining of C4-hydrocarbons by cold hydrogenation. In: 6th World Petroleum Congress , Lecture, 1963.