Abstract
Annates de Chemie et de Physique. The whole of the last part of the “Annales ” is occupied by M. Berthelot's Méthode universelle pour réduire et saturer d'hydrogàene les composés organiques, which is a résumé of the elaborate and exhaustive researches on the action of hydriodic acid on organic substances in which he has been engaged for the last three or four years. Most of the results have been already published from time to time in the Bulletin de la Société Chimique de Paris, and this classical research is now completed by the publication of the details of the methods of analysis and the thermochemical considerations involved. The author has found that any organic compound can be transformed into a saturated hydro-carbon, having, in general, the same number of atoms of carbon as the original substance, by heating it for a sufficient length of time to a temperature of 275°C, with a large excess of an aqueous solution of hydriodic acid of the specific gravity of 2·0. The proportion of the acid is varied according to the nature of the substance submitted to its action, twenty or thirty parts being sufficient to reduce an alcohol of the fatty series, whilst a member of the aromatic series and such substances as bitumen, wood charcoal, and coal, require, at least, one hundred times their weight; the large excess of acid serving the purpose of dissolving the iodine set free during the reaction, thus preventing its destructive action on the organic compound, and also in allowing the quantity of hydriodic acid necessary for the reduction of the substance, to be withdrawn from the solution without reducing its strength so far that the reaction ceases. One of the most remarkable results exhibitedin the application of this method is that of the direct transformation of benzene into the saturated hydrocarbon, hexylene hydride, C6 H6 + 8 H I = C6 H14 8I, affording, as it does, an instance of a direct passage from the aromatic to the fatty series. When other members of the phenyl series are treated with hydriodic acid, the ultimate product is the same; but there is an intermediate step in the reaction, resulting in the formation of benzene, which, by the continued action of the acid, is transformed into the corresponding saturated hydrocarbon. The fifth and last part of the paper is of great interest from a theoretical point of view, since it comprises the results of the author's experiments on bitumen, wood charcoal, and coal. The former of these substances, under the influence of hydriodic acid, yields hexylene hydride, the saturated hydrocarbon corresponding to benzene, from which it may be inferred that bitumen is a derivative of benzene, produced by condensation and loss of hydrogen. Charcoal and coal, when treated according to M. Berthelot's method, are transformed into a mixture of various saturated hydrocarbons, identical with those found in petroleum oil. In fact the coal is changed into petroleum oil
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Scientific Serials . Nature 4, 152–153 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004152b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004152b0