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Nicotine, C H N , the next simplest in formula of the alkaloids, is a tertiary base, that is, contains no replaceable hydrogen atoms in its molecule. It shows very close relations to pyridine. When nicotine vapor is passed through a red-hot tube, it yields essentially collidine, and, with this, some pyridine, picoline, lutidine, and gases such as hydrogen, marsh-gas, and ethylene.
These researches have dealt with a certain number of different bodies. Those relating to carbonic acid and ethylene take in the critical point. Others, on hydrogen and nitrogen, for instance, are very extended. Others, again, such as the study of the compressibility of water, have a special interest, on account of the peculiar properties of this substance.
C., gives off alcohol, and leaves a solid residue, which liquefies at 275 deg. C., alcohol and an oily body containing iodine passing over. At a higher temperature, this product was again decomposed, with formation of alcohol, ethylene, and alumina. But the most interesting results were obtained under diminished pressure.
M. Wroblewski, of Cracow, who had witnessed some of M. Cailletet's experiments, and obtained his apparatus, and M. Olzewski, in association with him, also experimented with ethylene, and had the pleasure of recording their first complete success early in April, 1883. Oxygen, having been previously compressed in a glass tube, became a permanent liquid, with a clearly defined meniscus.
Technically, ethylene is a fairly difficult gas to produce in large quantities, but, for the Ludwigshafen works, these difficulties were a thing of the past. There were twelve big units before the war, and, by the time of the Armistice, these had been increased to seventy-two in connection with mustard gas manufacture.
M. Cailletet devised a cheaper process, by employing another hydrocarbon that rises from the mud of marshes, and is called formene. MM. Cailletet, Wroblewski, and Olzewski have continued their experiments in liquefaction, and acquired increased facility in the handling of liquid ethylene, formene, atmospheric air, oxygen, and nitrogen.
It presented itself, like the other liquefied gases, under the form of a transparent and colorless substance, resembling water, but a little less dense. Long, difficult, and expensive operations were required to produce this result, for the extreme degree of cold it demanded had to be produced by boiling large quantities of ethylene in a vacuum.
Thus coal gas needs rather more than its own volume, and ethylene three times its volume, to give the maximum explosive results, while these mixtures begin to be explosive when 10 per cent. of oxygen is mixed with hydrogen or water gas, 30 per cent. with coal gas, and over 50 per cent. of oil gas of the character used.
Mustard Gas or Dichlordiethyl Sulphide. This was prepared in four stages: Preparation of Ethylene by heating alcohol with an aluminium oxide catalyst at 400'0 C. Preparation of Ethylene-chlor-hydrin, by passing ethylene and carbon dioxide into a 10 per cent. solution of bleaching powder at a temperature below zero centigrade, and subsequent concentration of the product to a 20 per cent. solution.
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