NON-TRADITIONAL POWDER CRYSTALLOGRAPHY IN THE PETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRY, J.A. Kaduk, pp. 78-91

When a steel pilot plant reactor was emptied, and left exposed to the humid summer atmosphere over a weekend, a heavy corrosion deposit formed on the inner surface. Because the process stream contained triflic acid (trifluoromethanesulfonic acid, CF3SO3H), the engineer wanted to determine whether the deposit contained triflate(s) [1]. The brown deposit was ground in a mortar and pestle. The major peaks of the powder pattern were not matched by any entry in the Powder Diffraction File [2]. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy indicated that the solid contained only C, O, F, S, Fe, and (presumably) H. A search of the Cambridge Structural Database [3] for iron triflates yielded no hits.