XIII. On the aëriform compounds of charcoal and hydrogen; with an account of some additional experiments on the gases from oil and from coal

• Published in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Royal Society 1821
• Subjects: Carbonic acid
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1821.0014; https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstl.1821.0014

The experiments on the aëriform compounds of charcoal and hydrogen, described in the following pages, are supple­mentary to a Memoir on the same class of bodies, which the Royal Society did me the honour to insert in their Trans­actions for 1808, as well as to other papers on the same subject, which have been published in Mr. Nicholson's Jour­nal, and in the Memoirs of the Manchester Society. Of these essays, I beg leave to offer a very brief recapitulation, with the view merely of connecting them with what is to follow. In the first of these essays (Nicholson's Journal, 8vo. June, 1805), I detailed a series of experiments on the gases ob­tained by the destructive distillation of wood, peat, pit-coal, oil, wax, &c. from which it appeared that the fitness of those gases for artificial illumination was greater, as they required for combustion a greater proportional volume of oxygen; and that the gases generated from different in­flammable bodies, or from the same inflammable substance under different circumstances, are not so many distinct spe­cies, which under such a view of the subject would be almost infinite in number, but are mixtures of a few well known gases, chiefly of carburetted hydrogen writh variable proportions of olefiant, simple hydrogen, sulphuretted hydro­gen, carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, and azotic gases; and that the elastic fluids obtained from coal, oil, &c, have probably, in addition to these, an inflammable vapour diffused through them when recent, which is not removed by passing them through water. In the same paper I explained cer­tain anomalies that appear in the experiments of the late Mr. Cruickshank, of Woolwich, which are not at all chargeable as errors upon that excellent chemist, and could only be elucidated by farther investigation of the gases to which they relate. Of his labours it would be unjust, indeed, to speak in any terms but those of approbation, for they may fairly be considered as the foundation of most that is now known respecting this species of aëriform ...