Bromine in daguerreotypy. Potassium bromide and sodium bromide were used as anticonvulsants and sedatives in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but were gradually superseded by chloral hydrate and then by the barbiturates. In the early years of the First World War, bromine compounds such as xylyl bromide were used as poison gas. Bromine is the third halogen, being a nonmetal in group 17 of the periodic table. Its properties are thus similar to those of fluorine, chlorine, and iodine, and tend to be intermediate between those of the two neighbouring halogens, chlorine and iodine. Bromine has the electron configuration
Bromine production in the United States rail access, and difficult highway access, and was shut down in 1945. Dow found a better permanent location at Freeport, Texas, where a seawater extraction plant started in 1940, and a second in 1943. The Freeport plants recovered magnesium, sodium compounds, and chlorine, in addition to the bromine. The Freeport chemical operations are still active, but they stopped extracting bromine in 1969. Brine mining Bromine production in the United States Bromine production in the United States of 225,000 tonnes in 2013 made that country the second-largest producer of bromine, after Israel. The US supplied 29 percent of world production. Since