User:Rsmascarenhas/sandbox

Henri Bernard Beer (born April 7, 1909 in Amsterdam, died 1994) was a Dutch inventor and business man.

He is known in electrochemistry as the inventor of the mixed metal oxides coatings and the creator of two patents known as Beer I and Beer II.

In 1986 due to his contributions in the field of electrochemistry, Beer was awarded an honorary doctorate degree by the University of Technology of Eindhoven.

Beer’s early research and reception
On the occasion of receiving The Vittorio de Nora-Diamond Shamrock medal, Beer wrote in the Journal of Electrochemical Society about his invention and industrial development of metal anodes in his early years. From 1957 to 1972 he worked with the company Magneto-Chemie (since 2002, Magneto Special Anodes, The Netherlands), where he found out about the remarkable properties of titanium and that by coating titanium with a precious metal or precious metal oxide it could be used to replace graphite in a chlor-alkali cell.

His metal coated anodes were not well received in the first 7 years in the chlor-alkali industry, because of the demand of high costly changes to the structure for the use of titanium anodes, other socio-economic factors and the scepticism of the industry towards this new technology. During these years he describes that he financially survived with supply of anodes for cathodic protection, electroplating and other minor industries.

Hayfield describes the almost simultaneous but totally independent granting of patents by Beer for rhodium plated titanium and Cotton for platinised titanium which led to collaboration between Magneto-Chemie and ICI at the beginning of 1958. At this time, an agreement was made between Beer’s company Magneto-Chemie and two divisions of the ICI organisation. Beer was to work on coating formulations while ICI were to concentrate on the commercial viability of the coatings on titanium electrodes. International Nickel and Engelhard gave early assistance during these formative years in the development of titanium based electrode technology. The agreement stayed in force until 1965.

In 1965, even with the improved performance from the nominal 70/30 Pt/Ir coatings compared with pure platinum, there was general frustration that more successful coated titanium electrodes for mercury-type chlorine cells, had not been found. In Europe at that time mercury-type chlorine technology predominated, whereas in North America diaphragm-type cells were mainly used.

Beer (at the time with Magneto-Chemie) proposed a change of coating to ruthenium oxide.

Beer I, Beer II and market implementation
Beer filed his now notable first oxide patent, ‘Beer 65’, known as Beer 1. Beer claimed the deposition of Ruthenium oxide, and admixing a soluble titanium compound to the paint, to approximately 50% (with molar percentage RuO2:TiO2 50:50).

The key aspects of Beer 1 are:


 * co-deposition
 * depositing a coating of improved adhesion
 * producing a coating of improved durability in mercury-type chlorine cells.

In 1967, Beer filed his ‘Beer 2’ patent on co-deposited RuO2/TiO2 coating, which he composed with the Ruthenium oxide content below 50% (molar percentage RuO2:TiO2 30:70). He was especially highly credited for this discovery.

On initial consideration, ruthenium oxide electrocatalyst did seem to work, but there was a disinterest in the industry to the change from the noble metal to the oxide. It was accepted, with resentment, that if a noble metal oxide did confer attractive chlorine evolution characteristics (many minerals exist in a stable oxide form) then oxides might just be suitable.

The grudging acceptance of Beer’s work, and his desire to speed up exploitation in the chlor-alkali industry, led Beer to sell his technical concepts and join forces with Diamond Shamrock, terminating all ties with ICI. This started the exploitation stage of his invention.

All the subtleties of the mixed metal oxide coating were not appreciated at that time.

It would be Vittorio de Nora who would negotiate and succeed with the chlorine producers to try Beer’s invention, which gave a start to the new generation of electrodes. .

Reception of the scientific community
Sergio Trasatti is the Professor of electrochemistry at the University of Milan. Writing in 2000 in the journal Electrochimica Acta he describes the “legend of DSA” (Dimensionally Stable Anodes) as one of the greatest technological breakthroughs of 50 years of electrochemical development but unknown to the scientific community for years after its invention.

Trasatti describes that oxide electrodes were essentially unknown in academic electrochemistry for at least 7 years after their invention. During this period industry was testing their performance. He describes it as a sort of “underground” activity from the scientific point of view, totally ignored by the scientific community. Considering the way in which DSA were introduced into electrochemical technology these electrodes have met with as great a success as any other but with a substantial difference, oxide electrodes constitute one of the greatest technological breakthroughs of the history of electrochemistry of the twentieth century. Oxide electrodes revealed immediately all their interesting potential, in 1968 they were already in use in industrial cells while nothing was known in the scientific community. It can be assumed that laboratory scale work had been carried out in industrial R&D labs.