Of vitriol

In the days of alchemy and the phlogiston theory, no system of nomenclature that would be considered logical ia the 1990s was possible. Names were not based on composition, but on historical association, eg, Glauber s salt for sodium sulfate decahydrate and Epsom salt for magnesium sulfate physical characteristics, eg, spirit of wiae for ethanol, oil of vitriol for sulfuric acid, butter of antimony for antimony trichloride, Hver of sulfur for potassium sulfide, and cream of tartar for potassium hydrogen tartrate or physiological behavior, eg, caustic soda for sodium hydroxide. Some of these common or trivial names persist, especially ia the nonchemical Hterature. Such names were a necessity at the time they were iatroduced because the concept of molecular stmcture had not been developed, and even elemental composition was incomplete or iadeterminate for many substances. 

Chemical Designations - Synonyms Battery acid Chamber acid Fertilizer acid Oil of vitriol Chemical Formula H2SO4. 

Also known as oil of vitriol, battery acid, oleum ... 

Sulfuric acid (H2S04) wins the prize for being the number one chemical produced worldwide. This acid is a colorless, odorless, thick liquid. The concentrated form of the acid is also called oleum, the Latin word for oil. In fact, it is so thick that it was once called oil of vitriol, a nickname given to the concentrated chemical because of its corrosiveness. 

Ethylene, the oil-forming gas , was prepared already in 1795 from spirits of wine and oil of vitriol by the five Dutch chemists, Deiman, Troostwyk, Bondt, Louwerenburgh, and Crells. 

SZ sol was obtained by gently stirring a solution of 16.5 g of ethanol, 10 g of Zr (0C4H9)4 (80 wt.% in butanol), 1.5 g of distilled water, and 5 g of vitriol in a 500-ml flask until the system became a wet gel which was mechanically crushed with intensified stirring to afford a transparent sol. 

By the care of my zealous assistant, Mr. W.C. Roberts, the hydrogen employed in these experiments was purified to the highest degree by passing it in succession through alcohol, water, caustic potash, and tubes of 0.7 meter each, filled with broken glass impregnated with nitrate of lead, sulphate of silver, and oil of vitriol. The gas was inodorous, and burned with a barely visible flame. ... 

AN ALCHEMIST WITH A RETORT AN ALCHEMIST PREPARING OIL OF VITRIOL ALCHEMICAL APPARATUS FOR RECTIFYING SPIRITS... 

The process of making oil of vitriol, by burning sulphur under a hood fitted with a side tube for the outflow of the oil of vitriol, is represented in Fig. XIII. p. 92. 

There seems no doubt that Paracelsus discovered many facts which became of great importance in chemistry he prepared the inflammable gas we now call hydrogen, by the reaction between iron filings and oil of vitriol he distinguished metals from substances which had been classed with metals but lacked the essential metalline character of ductility he made medicinal preparations of mercury, lead and iron, and introduced many new and powerful drugs, notably laudanum. Paracelsus insisted that medicine is a branch of chemistry, and that the restoration of the body of a patient to a condition of chemical equilibrium is the restoration to health. 

The first industrial preparation of sulfuric add from green vitriol (ferrous sulfate), according to Hermann Kopp, was by Johann Christian Bernhardt in 1755 (9,10). A fuming sulfuric acid known as Nordhausen oil of vitriol was manufactured at Nordhausen, Thuringia, from partially dehydrated green vitriol (11). 

Hermann Kopp found the earliest mention of the British process in Robert Dossie s Elaborately laid open m 1758. Dossie spoke only of glass receptacles for the acid (9). In his Institutes of Experimental Chemistry in the following year, he stated that this process had greatly lowered the price of oil of vitriol and had made possible the use of this acid in the preparation of aqua foitis (nitric acid) from saltpeter (7). 

Although G. E. Stahl and Caspar Neumann both believed that alum contained lime, J. H. Pott was unable to prepare it from lime and vitriolic acid, but always obtained merely selenite (calcium sulfate) (74). When Stahl leached with water a broken clay tube he had used for distilling spirit of vitriol (sulfuric acid), he obtained crystals of alum (74). Pott, too, prepared alum from clay and sulfuric acid (74). 

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