Marcus Faena

Portrait of Marcus Faena, painted 1832.

Marcus Faena was a Fhainnin inventor and chemist born in the city of Haldane in 1798, most famously known for founding the Faena Chemical Production Company in 1831 and his work in antiseptics and the chemical sciences. He was one of the largest contributors to the field of inorganic chemistry of the 19th and 20th Centuries and made several advances in medicinal and electrochemistry.

Early Life

Marcus Faena was born to Marwyn and Ciria Faena in Haldane, Faneria in May 1798. Marcus' family were lower-middle-class, and Marwyn worked as an apothecary at his family shop, where Marcus helped as a child. Marcus attended private schooling locally, as his father placed an enormous importance on education; Marcus distinguished himself by passing many of his peers in literacy and mathematics at an early age. However, he was uninterested in his father's business, believing it to be a snake oil shop and instead attending university at Sathlagen Technical Institute in its early days. There, he majored in mathematics, but his social circles veered towards chemistry, as he became infatuated with the idea of discovering his own element and frequently sought the attention of researchers and chemists specializing in early industrial processes.

Career

Faena Tinctures and Free Study in Oirthidún

After attaining his Masters' in mathematics, Faena returned home to manage his father's business; however, he was unable to focus on the store, and began to convert it into a personal laboratory. This lead to a falling-out with his father, and the young man moved briefly to Oirthidún, hoping to catch royal favor as chemistry and early industrial processes were increasingly an obsession of the reformist Rih Luthais Suthar-Màrtainn. While unsuccessful, Faena made himself a number of allies in the intelligentsia, which allowed him to fund his work under the patronage of several investors.

Isolation of Chlorine

Chlorine had been discovered in 1787 by Wilhelm Rouyen, a Dericanian chemist, but was at the time misidentified as a compound named 'muriatic acid'. Other chemists had proposed that muriatic acid was composed of oxygen and a separate element, Murium, but Faena was the first to test the reacting substance using a carbon, creating carbon dioxide and what he believed to be Murium. The precipitate created was actually chlorine hydrate (Cl₂·H₂O). Faena would revisit his work on Chlorine often, performing a number of experiments which yielded an early and inefficient process for creating chlorine gas, discovering the processes for creating sodium hypochlorite and calcium hypochlorite, and later refining elemental chlorine, disproving some of his own earlier work. The eventual name Chlorine was decided based on Latin nomenclature, much to his chagrin.

Faena Chemical Production Company

Faena's experiments eventually lead him to market his findings and publish papers on his work, allowing him to attain the funds for production facilities in Comghallport. This simultaneously allowed him to escape the stigma of his family business and increased his personal reputation and class significantly. Originally, he produced calcium hypochlorite as a water disinfectant and sodium hypochlorite. The sodium hypochlorite was used as a precursor sodium chloride (salt) and sodium chlorate, which were sold as road salt and an herbicide respectively. Later, after contributions by other chemists, the company was able to produce bleach by adding trace amounts of lye to sodium hypochlorite and water. The sanitation properties would be discovered later along with germ theory around the time of Fanea's retirement, but was sold prior as a fabric whitener. In addition, a number of other chemicals were discovered by Faena in his laboratory complex, which at its height housed over twenty students who chose to intern under him, generally within the realm of sodium and chlorine-based compounds. The company and its sales, while prolific, served primarily as a bottomless well of funding in Faena's perspective.

Faena expanded his company into the soda ash business, beginning to sell industrial chemicals in the 1840s including agents used in the manufacture of glass, paper, soap, dyes, and later borax (as well as manufacturing borax itself), and plasters. The FCPC would go on to make another significant breakthrough under advisement by Faena in 1863, discovering the Selway Process used to create manmade soda ash far more efficiently than previous methods.

Sulfates

Through attempts to refine the soda ash process, Faena would become obsessed in his later life with sulfates and sulfur compound in general.

- elemental sulfur: fertilizer additive, fungicide and pesticide

- Sulfuric acid: precursor for phosphate fertilizers, derusting, salt production, petrolium/gas refining, dyes and inks, batteries, non-ferrous metal manufacture, water treatment, paper make and sizing, gas/petrol refinement, insecticides, pharmecuticals, batteries, and others

-aimed to improve soda ash process, sulfuric acid was produced but experiments with it would discover use as insecticide and as an antimalarial (latter part not his work)

-company would later be one of the first to produce Sulfonamides based off his work

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Electrochemistry

After retiring early in 1861, Faena took to experimenting with early batteries such as the Parnell Cell, attempting to find a way to prevent the noxious emessions created by the relatively powerful battery. This ultimately would lead to him devising several inefficient batteries, though these would all turn out to be dead ends in the field, but considerably eased attempts by later researchers due to Faena's meticulous and rigorous adoption of the scientific method, particularly in regards to his comprehensive notetaking. In addition, his company would be among the first to produce lead-acid batteries.

Legacy

In addition to his contributions in life, many of the chemicals he discovered remain in production by his company and have found a range of industrial and home uses across the world. Sodium hypochlorite is used to denature several sulfates and other industrial byproducts, sodium hypochlorite is used to convert cyanide into non-toxic cyanate, and sodium chlorate is used in chemical oxygen generators, to name several.