Lazar Edeleanu
Encyclopedia
Lazăr Edeleanu (ˈlazər edeˈle̯anu; 1861, Bucharest
- 1941) was a Romania
n chemist
of Jewish origin.
He was the first chemist to synthesize amphetamine
at the University of Berlin and the inventor of the modern method of refining
crude oil
.
. As he showed an early aptitude for science, was sent at the age of 12 to study in Bucharest at the prestigious St. Sava College. Lived in poor housing conditions, in a basement room and earned his living through giving private lessons.
So could he receive his baccalaureate in 1882. After ending high school, he worked hard as worker in order to go on and study - chemistry - at the Berlin University with A.W. Hofmann
, C.F. Rammelsberg and H.L. Helmholtz
.
In 1887, he received the title of Doctor in Chemistry with the thesis "On the derivatives of fatty phenylmethacrylic and phenylisobutyric acids" (original title in German: "Ueber einige Derivate der Phenylmethacrylsäure und der Phenylisobuttersäure"), in which he described phenylisopropylamine, a nervous system stimulant also known as amphetamine
or benzedrine
.
as lecturer and assistant to professor Hodgkinson. During this period he collaborated with C.F. Cross and E.J. Bevan to create a type of artificial fireproof silk and with R. Meldola to create oxazine-based dye
s. Back in Romania, he was hired by chemist Constantin I. Istrati as assistant, and then lecturer, at the Faculty of Sciences in Bucharest, Organic Chemistry Department. In 1906 he was appointed Head of the Chemistry Laboratory at the Geology Institute (founded that year) and director of Vega Refinery near Ploesti (refinery owned at that time by German company Diskont). In 1907 he co-organized the Petroleum Congress in Bucharest and co-authored a monograph on Romanian crude oil's physical and technical properties with Ion Tănăsescu.
1908 was the year of his most significant invention, the Edeleanu process
, in which petroleum is refined with liquid sulfur dioxide
to selectively extract aromatic hydrocarbon
s (benzene
, toluene
, xylene
, etc.). The procedure was first applied experimentally in Romania at the Vega Refinery, then at Rouen
, France, in Germany, and subsequently throughout the world.
was bought by the Deutsche Erdöl-AG, later changed several times its owners and in 2002 was acquired by Uhde GmbH, which is owned by Thyssen-Krupp trust. The name Edeleanu stayed in use for the refinery department till nowadays.
Lazăr Edeleanu came back to Romania and died in Bucharest in April 1941.
Edeleanu obtained 212 patents for inventions in Romania, USA, Germany, France, Austria, Sweden, and Holland.
Editura Hasefer, 2004 p. 215-216
(Fed. of Jewish Communities in Romania - Contributions of Romanian Jews to culture and civilization, Hasefer Publ.House, Bucharest 2004, in Romanian 215-216)
Magdaleine Moureau.Gerald Brace
Dictionnaire du petrole et d'autres sources d'energie –anglais- français
Ed. Technip 2008
1st World Petroleum Congress, July 18–24, 1933 , London, UK
in the Monit. Petr. Roumanie , obituary article - 1941
Lazăr Edeleanu Editura Stiinţifică şi enciclopedică
Bucureşti,1982 (in Romanian)
(Anglo-Rumanian Bibliography of works and brevets of dr L.Edeleanu), Bucureşti 1946.
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
- 1941) was a Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n chemist
Chemist
A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
of Jewish origin.
He was the first chemist to synthesize amphetamine
Amphetamine
Amphetamine or amfetamine is a psychostimulant drug of the phenethylamine class which produces increased wakefulness and focus in association with decreased fatigue and appetite.Brand names of medications that contain, or metabolize into, amphetamine include Adderall, Dexedrine, Dextrostat,...
at the University of Berlin and the inventor of the modern method of refining
Oil refinery
An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where crude oil is processed and refined into more useful petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas...
crude oil
Petroleum
Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...
.
His childhood and studies
Edeleanu, son of Jewish turner Shaye Edeleanu, was raised in Bucharest and in the town of FocşaniFocsani
Focşani is the capital city of Vrancea County in Romania on the shores the Milcov river, in the historical region of Moldavia. It has a population of 101,854.-Geography:...
. As he showed an early aptitude for science, was sent at the age of 12 to study in Bucharest at the prestigious St. Sava College. Lived in poor housing conditions, in a basement room and earned his living through giving private lessons.
So could he receive his baccalaureate in 1882. After ending high school, he worked hard as worker in order to go on and study - chemistry - at the Berlin University with A.W. Hofmann
August Wilhelm von Hofmann
August Wilhelm von Hofmann was a German chemist.-Biography:Hofmann was born at Gießen, Grand Duchy of Hesse. Not intending originally to devote himself to physical science, he first took up the study of law and philology at Göttingen. But he then turned to chemistry, and studied under Justus von...
, C.F. Rammelsberg and H.L. Helmholtz
Hermann von Helmholtz
Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz was a German physician and physicist who made significant contributions to several widely varied areas of modern science...
.
In 1887, he received the title of Doctor in Chemistry with the thesis "On the derivatives of fatty phenylmethacrylic and phenylisobutyric acids" (original title in German: "Ueber einige Derivate der Phenylmethacrylsäure und der Phenylisobuttersäure"), in which he described phenylisopropylamine, a nervous system stimulant also known as amphetamine
Amphetamine
Amphetamine or amfetamine is a psychostimulant drug of the phenethylamine class which produces increased wakefulness and focus in association with decreased fatigue and appetite.Brand names of medications that contain, or metabolize into, amphetamine include Adderall, Dexedrine, Dextrostat,...
or benzedrine
Benzedrine
Benzedrine is the trade name of the racemic mixture of amphetamine . It was marketed under this brandname in the USA by Smith, Kline & French in the form of inhalers, starting in 1928...
.
His research activity in England and Romania
After receiving his doctorate, Edeleanu worked for a time at the Royal College of Artillery in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
as lecturer and assistant to professor Hodgkinson. During this period he collaborated with C.F. Cross and E.J. Bevan to create a type of artificial fireproof silk and with R. Meldola to create oxazine-based dye
Dye
A dye is a colored substance that has an affinity to the substrate to which it is being applied. The dye is generally applied in an aqueous solution, and requires a mordant to improve the fastness of the dye on the fiber....
s. Back in Romania, he was hired by chemist Constantin I. Istrati as assistant, and then lecturer, at the Faculty of Sciences in Bucharest, Organic Chemistry Department. In 1906 he was appointed Head of the Chemistry Laboratory at the Geology Institute (founded that year) and director of Vega Refinery near Ploesti (refinery owned at that time by German company Diskont). In 1907 he co-organized the Petroleum Congress in Bucharest and co-authored a monograph on Romanian crude oil's physical and technical properties with Ion Tănăsescu.
1908 was the year of his most significant invention, the Edeleanu process
Edeleanu process
The Edeleanu process is a type of extraction process in the petroleum refining industry, whereby liquid sulfur dioxide is used to extract aromatics from kerosene pool, Liquid SO2 selectively dissolves the aromatics leaving behind the low aromatic content kerosene as the finished product...
, in which petroleum is refined with liquid sulfur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide is the chemical compound with the formula . It is released by volcanoes and in various industrial processes. Since coal and petroleum often contain sulfur compounds, their combustion generates sulfur dioxide unless the sulfur compounds are removed before burning the fuel...
to selectively extract aromatic hydrocarbon
Hydrocarbon
In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbons from which one hydrogen atom has been removed are functional groups, called hydrocarbyls....
s (benzene
Benzene
Benzene is an organic chemical compound. It is composed of 6 carbon atoms in a ring, with 1 hydrogen atom attached to each carbon atom, with the molecular formula C6H6....
, toluene
Toluene
Toluene, formerly known as toluol, is a clear, water-insoluble liquid with the typical smell of paint thinners. It is a mono-substituted benzene derivative, i.e., one in which a single hydrogen atom from the benzene molecule has been replaced by a univalent group, in this case CH3.It is an aromatic...
, xylene
Xylene
Xylene encompasses three isomers of dimethylbenzene. The isomers are distinguished by the designations ortho- , meta- , and para- , which specify to which carbon atoms the two methyl groups are attached...
, etc.). The procedure was first applied experimentally in Romania at the Vega Refinery, then at Rouen
Rouen
Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...
, France, in Germany, and subsequently throughout the world.
His research and business activity in Germany
Since 1910 Edeleanu himself settled in Germany there he founded a company called "Allgemeine Gesellschaft für Chemische Industrie". Due to the success of the logo "Edeleanu", since 1930 the company changed its name to Edeleanu GmbH. During the National Socialist regimewas bought by the Deutsche Erdöl-AG, later changed several times its owners and in 2002 was acquired by Uhde GmbH, which is owned by Thyssen-Krupp trust. The name Edeleanu stayed in use for the refinery department till nowadays.
Lazăr Edeleanu came back to Romania and died in Bucharest in April 1941.
Edeleanu's heritage
By 1960, there were 80 Edeleanu facilities worldwide. The Edeleanu Method is still used today, in its many variations, and remains the basic process for manufacturing high quality oils.Edeleanu obtained 212 patents for inventions in Romania, USA, Germany, France, Austria, Sweden, and Holland.
Prizes and honors
- 1910 - member of the Society of Natural Sciences in Moscow
- 1925 - honorary member of the Institution of Petroleum Technologists in London (1925)
- 1932 - Theophilus RedwoodTheophilus RedwoodTheophilus Redwood was a Welsh pharmacist who was one of the founding members of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. He was born in Boverton, Llantwit Major....
Medal for lifetime scientific achievement in analytic chemistry.
Sources
- FCER - Contribuţia evreilor din România la cultură şi civilizaţie
Editura Hasefer, 2004 p. 215-216
(Fed. of Jewish Communities in Romania - Contributions of Romanian Jews to culture and civilization, Hasefer Publ.House, Bucharest 2004, in Romanian 215-216)
- Allgemeine deutsche Biographie&Neue deutsche Biographie Bd.4,Duncker &Humblot, Berlin 1959
Magdaleine Moureau.Gerald Brace
Dictionnaire du petrole et d'autres sources d'energie –anglais- français
Ed. Technip 2008
- E H J Rosenburg- The History of selective solvents
1st World Petroleum Congress, July 18–24, 1933 , London, UK
- Dr.L.Edeleanu - Ludovic Mrazec
in the Monit. Petr. Roumanie , obituary article - 1941
Links
- Homepage der Edeleanu GmbH since 2002 owned by Uhde company (in German)
- *biography - in Romanian
Further reading
- S.Benari
Lazăr Edeleanu Editura Stiinţifică şi enciclopedică
Bucureşti,1982 (in Romanian)
- O.Păduraru -Bibliografia lucrărilor şi brevetelor în limba engleză de dr. L. Edeleanu
(Anglo-Rumanian Bibliography of works and brevets of dr L.Edeleanu), Bucureşti 1946.
- I.Drimuş, C. Tache - Lazăr Edeleanu , precursor al chimizării petrolului , (in Romanian) in Revista de chimie 1958
- Robert Treyball- Liquid extraction - McGrawHill Book Co,1951m first edition
- Avilino Sequeira - Lubricant base oil and wax processing CRC Press 1994
- Alan A.Comyns - Encyclopedic Dictionary of Named Processes in Chemical Technology - CRCPress 1999