Oxygen in History

Activated carbons contain chemisorbed oxygen in varying amounts unless special cate is taken to eliminate it. Desired adsorption properties often depend upon the amount and type of chemisorbed oxygen species on the surface. Therefore, the adsorption properties of an activated carbon adsorbent depend on its prior temperature and oxygen-exposure history. In contrast, molecular sieve 2eohtes and other oxide adsorbents are not affected by oxidi2ing or reducing conditions. 

Combustion has a very long history. From antiquity up to the middle ages, fire along with earth, water, and air was considered to be one of the four basic elements in the universe. However, with the work of Antoine Lavoisier, one of the initiators of the Chemical Revolution and discoverer of the Law of Conservation of Mass (1785), its importance was reduced. In 1775-1777, Lavoisier was the first to postulate that the key to combustion was oxygen. He realized that the newly isolated constituent of air (Joseph Priestley in England and Carl Scheele in Sweden, 1772-1774) was an element he then named it and formulated a new definition of combustion, as the process of chemical reactions with oxygen. In precise, quantitative experiments he laid the foundations for the new theory, which gained wide acceptance over a relatively short period. 

Fig. 1.9. Cumulative history of 02 levels through geologic time as recorded by minerals and fossil dating. Most of the oxygen is now present as Fe203 (some 65%). Molecular oxygen in the atmosphere represents 21% in volume (see Fig. 1.12), but only some 4% of the total oxygen on Earth.

The variation in the measured electron mobilities from sample to sample in sintered materials (also observed by Hahn, ref. 24), may be due to any of several effects. The most probable reason for this variation in the well-sintered samples studied is a difference in history the individual samples are obtained with different numbers of conduction electrons per cm. frozen in in the necks. That is, the different history has allowed different amounts of oxygen to be adsorbed on the surface. Thus the concentration of electrons in the grain, as measured by the Hall coefficient, will have little relation to the concentration of electrons in the neck, as measured by the conductivity, and the mobility, obtained from the product of the Hall coefficient and the conductivity, will be neither the true mobility nor constant from sample to sample. The different samples may also end up with varying geometry of their necks, according to their previous treatment. 

I have also to shew you a little more distinctly the history of carbon and oxygen, in their union to make carbonic acid. You are... 

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