Abstract
LONDON
Chemical Society, April 6.-Prof. Frankland, F.R.S., president, in the chair. The president, occupying the chair the first time since his election, returned his thanks to the Society for the honour conferred upon him, and expressed his readiness to discharge the duties of his office to the best oi his abilities. The following gentlemen were elected fellows:-F. Coles, C. E. Groves, E. W. T. Jones, L. T. MacEwan, and J. L. Shuter. The following papers were read: “On Burnt Iron and Burnt Steel,"by W. Mattieu Williams. Iron, which has been damaged by reheating, or excessively heated and exposed after balling in the puddling furnace, is designated "burnt iron“by the workmen. It is remarkable that no amount of heat applied to the iron in the blast furnace or in the early stages of the puddling process produces burnt iron. Burnt iron is brittle, its fracture is short and what is called crystalline, it has lost the fibrous character of good iron. If steel is raised to a bright red heat and suddenly cooled, it is rendered hard and brittle, but these conditions may be modified by the process of tempering; if, however, the steel be raised to a yellow or white heat, and then be suddenly cooled, it is no longer capable of being tempered by mere reheating. It is worthless for ordinary uses of steel unless it is again raised to a welding heat and rolled or hammered while hot, and then allowed to cool gradually. The fracture of burnt steel presents a coarse grain and a crystalline appearance. Careful investigation, however, shows something more, viz., that the facets of the aggregated granules have a more or less conchoidal form. The name of "toad's eyes“has been given by practical men to these concavities. Mr. Williams found that a piece of burnt iron contained oxide of iron dispersed through its mass. A sample of burnt steel, however, investigated in the same manner as the iron, showed no indications of the presence of oxide. This, of course, was to be expected, as the carbon of the steel must, more or less completely, protect the metal from oxidation. That iron, when unprotected by combined carbon^ should oxidise not merely on its surface, but through its whole substance, when exposed at a sufficiently high temperature and for a sufficient length of time to the action of the atmospheric oxygen, is not difficult to conceive, since the researches of Deville, Troost, and Graham have shown red-hot iron to be permeable by certain gases. In the case of steel, as Mr. Williams states, the burning is limited to the oxidation and consequent removal of the carbon, which takes place even at a low red heat. The permeability of red-hot steel by oxygen and carbonic oxide enables us to understand the process of the internal oxidation ol the carbon. The “toad's eyes “or conchoidal facets of the so-called crystals, Mr. Williams explains by supposing a piece of steel at the temperature most favourable to the rapidest endosmosis of oxygen and the exosmosis of carbonic oxide to be suddenly cooled, and the possible occlusion of the carbonic oxide to be arrested. The results would be a certain molecular disintegration and porosity of the steel presenting those conchoidal spots. This view is further supported by the fact that burnt steel may be cured by reheating and hammering, or rolling at a welding heat. ''On the Formation of Sulpho-acids,“by Dr. Armstrong. Occupied with an investigation into the constitution of sulphuric acid, the author turned his attention to chlorhydric sulphate, a body discovered some years ago by Prof. Williamson. When that substance, SO2 HO Cl, is made to react on benzol, the chief product of the reaction is sulphobenzid; sulphobenzolic chloride and sulphobenzolic acid being also formed, but in relatively small quantity. This led Dr. Armstrong to commence a series of experiments to determine, if possible, the conditions under which the one or the other of the above reactions took place, and to arrive at a general expression for the action of chlorhydric sulphate on organic bodies. The bodies he had until now acted upon with SO., HO Cl are brombenzol, nitrobenzol, nitrophenol (both modifications, the volatile and the non-volatile), and naphthalin. The results of his experiments lead the author to conclude that the normal action, so to speak, of SO2 HO Cl is to form a sulpho-acid, the Cl of the chloride removing H from the body acted upon, and replacing it by the group HSO3; it is only under certain conditions that both Cl and HO are removed from the chloride, and a sulphobenzid-analogous compound formed. What these conditions are Dr. Armstrong hopes to establish by further experiments. "On a Water from the Coal Measures at Westville, N.S.,“by Prof. How. The contents of this paper bear upon the relation of the constitution of a water, and the nature of the geological stratum from which it takes its origin. The water above-mentioned comes from what Dr. Dawson terms the Middle Coal Formation of Nova Scotia, which includes the productive beds of coal, and which, according! to the same authority, are destitute of properly marine limestone. The analysis of the water seems to bear out the latter assertion, since the water is very poor in chlorides.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Societies and Academies . Nature 3, 497–500 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/003497b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003497b0