Bromine Bromine Bromine is a chemical element with symbol Br and atomic number 35. It is the third-lightest halogen, and is a fuming red-brown liquid at room temperature that evaporates readily to form a similarly coloured gas. Its properties are thus intermediate between those of chlorine and iodine. Isolated independently by two chemists, Carl Jacob Löwig (in 1825) and Antoine Jérôme Balard (in 1826), its name was derived from the Ancient Greek βρῶμος ("stench"), referencing its sharp and disagreeable smell. Elemental bromine is very reactive and thus does not occur free in nature, but in colourless soluble crystalline mineral halide salts,
Halogen made from hydrofluoric acid produced as a by-product in phosphoric acid manufacture. Approximately 15,000 metric tons of fluorine gas are made per year. The mineral halite is the mineral that is most commonly mined for chlorine, but the minerals carnallite and sylvite are also mined for chlorine. Forty million metric tons of chlorine are produced each year by the electrolysis of brine. Approximately 450,000 metric tons of bromine are produced each year. Fifty percent of all bromine produced is produced in the United States, 35% in Israel, and most of the remainder in China. Historically, bromine was produced by adding