Abstract
WE want to thank Prof. Armstrong for his breezy review of our book in NATURE of Sept. 24 and his suggestions for improving our brains. Before putting on the ‘thinking’ cap, however, we would like to ask him why, in discussing flame reactions, he asserts that we “ignore the prime fact, that the heat of combustion of carbonic oxide is below that of hydrogen; … It cannot, therefore, be oxidised by steam”? For, in our ‘nursery’ days, we were taught that it is the other way round, and that, volume for volume, hydrogen burning to steam gives out about 16 per cent. less energy than carbonic oxide burning to carbon dioxide; also that the change from the system CO + H2O (steam) to the system CO2 + H2 is exothermic. If, as Prof. Armstrong says, we are wrong, we have sinned in such good company as Berthelot, Julius Thomsen, and indeed every other investigator of heats of combustion. On the other hand, if we are right, does not the ‘snag’ in his combustion theory thus stand self-revealed? Is there, indeed, any evidence that not ‘hydrone’ (steam) but something much more complex and ‘hydronolic’ (water) is formed in flames?
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BONE, W., TOWNEND, D. Flame and Combustion. Nature 120, 586 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/120586b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/120586b0
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